Howl of the Dragon
by Iffy Jr
Summary: Derek/Stiles royalty AU. "5 kingdoms rule the land of Beacon, but only 2 of them actively socialize. Stiles is a dragon and Derek is a werewolf, and while their friendship isn't forbidden, it IS frowned upon—especially because they're both royalty who should be setting examples for the others. Rules never stopped anybody, though, and it certainly won't stop a secret." COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes**: Alright so in this particular TW Sterek world there are 5 intelligent groups of species, and each of these species inhabits a kingdom. The five species are dragons, werewolves, werecats, merfolk, and arachnids (I couldn't think of a cool people/spider mash-up name whoops; also just spiders, no scorpions and stuff). The two main kingdoms/species of this story are the werewolves (Derek, duh) and the dragons (Stiles). Because I'm totally creative but not really, all of the kingdoms are called Beacon something-or-another—for example, the dragon kingdom is Beacon Sky and the werewolf kingdom is Beacon Moon.  
Derek is a werewolf prince, Stiles is a dragon prince, and I know Scott and Jackson are werewolves but they're going to be dragons in this story so he can chill with Stiles and whatnot. Also all of the kingdoms use the alpha/beta terms because, just like the werewolves, there are beta forms, but then a higher alpha forms for those with royal blood. Stuff like that. Aaaand since Sheriff Stilinski doesn't have a first name I am making it Patrick because of reasons. Also there are a bunch of Disney references in this first chapter but it makes sense I swear. _ALSO_…there are total medieval dance parties. I originally tried to make it a sort of party thing with flashing lights, but their era is without electricity, so just picture a really big, epic square dance sort of thing when it gets to any of them :P  
PS the first part of the first chapter is a whole bunch of boring background stuff at first but just bear with me here. Enjoy :)

**Disclaimer**: You know the drill!

**S****ummary**: Derek/Stiles royalty AU. "5 kingdoms rule the land of Beacon, but only 2 of them actively socialize. Stiles is a dragon and Derek is a werewolf, and while their friendship isn't forbidden, it IS frowned upon—especially because they're both royalty who should be setting examples for the others. Rules never stopped anybody, though, and it certainly won't stop a secret." COMPLETE.

**Pairings**: (Main) Derek/Stiles; (Other) Sheriff/Claudia, Scott/Allison, Jackson/Lydia, Chris/Victoria, Erica/Boyd/Isaac, Paige/Mermaid OC, Ethan/Danny, Aiden/Heather; previous Stiles/Heather, previous Derek/Paige, previous Derek/Jennifer, one night stand Matt/Heather

**Rating**: Mature  
**Additional tags/Warnings**: AU - Royalty; romance, adventure; slow build; fairy tale romance; conspiracy, traitors; dragon!Stiles; m/m, m/f, f/f, and m/m/f pairings; sexual content; bottom!Stiles, top!Derek

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[Chapter summary: In which, as royalty, you've got to fake it till you make it. Or, in Stiles' case, try really hard not to be late, trip over himself, or call his parents "mom and dad".]

**Chapter 1**

_Day 1…_

Stiles sighs happily, stretching out in his human form where he's lying out in the sun. He's in international territory as of now, smack in the middle of all the kingdoms. Hardly anyone from any of the kingdoms actually comes out here, and when they do, Stiles is long gone before they see him. It's not really an issue of enemies since his dragon people are allies will all of the kingdoms, but he just knows that, as a prince and the heir to the dragon kingdom, he probably shouldn't be caught sunbathing on a random stone by a muddy lake in one of the only spots in the International Forest that the sun can actually reach the ground.

There are five kingdoms here, each kingdom splendorous in their own fashion. The kingdom of Beacon Sky is the home Stiles and his other dragon people, and though they're the largest and the most powerful of the kingdoms, Stiles is proud to say that they're also the most peaceful. They do have their somewhat violent villagers, but they always stick to the dragon code, which means following the rules of the king (Patrick) and queen (Claudia)—also known as Stiles' parents. The Stilinski's have ruled the kingdom since the dawn of its time, and they'll continue to be unless Stiles doesn't end up with an heir by blood.

Even if he didn't, though, the Stilinski's are the only dragons with alpha blood, so the kingdom would become significantly less powerful and most likely be pillaged and then dragged into one of the other kingdoms as slaves. That's the only reason that Stiles is never afraid that his own people will assassinate them; it's a pretty good backbone, to be honest. The only way that alpha power can be transferred is through sex, but even then it's a consented thing. You don't get it automatically if you sleep with someone of royal blood, but only if the royal one agrees to it. Stiles isn't exactly sure how the body just knows that it can spread it's royal blood, but the body can do a lot of things he doesn't understand, so he stopped questioning it.

What Stiles loves about being the most peaceful kingdom is that they're even the most peaceful inside the borders. There are servants for the royals, of course, but it's no Cinderella story (she was the very first Stilinski and the queen that created the dragon kingdom in the first place) where they live terribly. In Beacon Sky, since there are only three royal family members, the castle is gigantic and there are plenty of extra rooms, so all of the servants (and even some of Stiles' friends) sleep in the castle in luxurious rooms and even eat at the same table as the Stilinski's. It gets boring with just the three of them, so why not invite friends over? They have a lot of parties and festivals since they have the resources, so they're very well liked, and that's another reason that Stiles is confident they won't be assassinated in their sleep.

Beacon Sky is on the highest hill of all the five kingdoms, and if you fly to a certain height of the castle you can see the two closest kingdoms beyond the borders of both his own kingdom and of the International Forests. The five kingdoms are all in a sort of circular pattern, each of the castles facing towards the middle. The International Forest starts in the middle and then branches out between the kingdoms, ensuring the borders because it's a forest made of a completely different species of tree than the ones in any of the other kingdoms.

To the right of the dragon kingdom is Beacon Moon, where live the werewolf people. They used to be the greatest enemies of the dragon kingdom, but very recently (if two-hundred season cycles can be called recent; then again, it does sound so if you call it two generations) the two kingdoms signed a treaty. The histories say it was tense at first, but now they're all fine and dandy with each other. There dragons and werewolves are allowed free passage between the kingdoms for trades and things, but that's about it. It's still somewhat frowned upon for dragons and werewolves to be close friends and _especially_ to have romantic relationships with each other, but that's not a huge problem since most species like to stick to their own kind anyway. Beacon Moon is ruled by the Hale's, and instead of the Stilinski's three, they have _five_. They used to have six, but their king—the father of three—died just fourteen (which is most of Stiles' life, considering that he's only going to be turning eighteen in a few weeks) season cycles ago from simple heart failure. Talia is their queen, her oldest child is Laura (and in line for the throne once Talia dies), her middle child Derek, her youngest Cora, and her younger brother is Peter. Their founder was Red Riding Hale, though her last name was Hood before she got married.

To the left of the dragon kingdom is Beacon Wave, where dwell the merfolk, and because of it, almost the entire kingdom is water. It's a gigantic lake, fathoms deep and their kingdom lying beneath the waves. They do have their human forms to come on land, but that's mostly just to gather a few land supplies here and there and also to guard the waters edge. They don't have a huge care for the land since they have _plenty_ of food beneath the water, where they've spent most of their lives in their beta forms. They're the weakest of the kingdoms, and because they're the only ones that can breathe underwater, they tend to stick to themselves. They were founded by the great Ariel and are ruled by Phillip and Antoinette Trident, with a daughter named Jal.

The kingdom to the left of Beacon Wave is Beacon Sun, where lies the kingdom of the werecat people. They're very close in relations to the werewolves, but somewhere before all of the kingdoms were originally formed was a break in the gene code of the werewolves that instead bore _cats_. They're essentially the exact same as werewolves, but their main differences are that they have tails, they don't come out on the full moon but on the _new_ moon, and instead of being powerless during the lunar eclipse it's during the solar eclipse. Cats are very well known for their knack of taking breaks during the middle of hot days and napping in the sun (dragons do that as well, though strategically, and only because they're coldblooded). They were founded by the great Pocahontas, who was the first one to ever even roam this land and set up her kingdom, with the other four following shortly after. They are ruled by Aristocats, with their king named Thomas, their queen Duchess, and their three children, Marie, Berlioz, and Roquefort. For such fashionable names they practically live like savages. They're also the most violent of the kingdoms, and though they're only declared enemies with the werewolves and the merfolk (cats don't mix well with dogs and water, after all), they certainly don't tolerate entry from the other two kingdoms either.

And, that second kingdom besides Beacon Sky, is known as Beacon Hole, where dwell the arachnids. The entire kingdom is below the ground, all of their entrances completely hidden to the eyes of those from another kingdom. The histories tell of tales of a world of darkness and stone and clumps of glowing eyes, and it doesn't help that the arachnids are very reclusive of their beta and alpha forms. Stiles has seen their human forms, sure, but since they have peace treaties with all of the kingdoms as well, there's never been a need for them to move around in their beta forms. It's odd seeing a kingdom of what looks like entirely humans when dragons and werewolves usually walk around in their beta forms, but to each their own. They were founded rather…darkly. Megara Romanova had been cursed by the dark lord Hades for disobeying him, which is how the arachnids were created, and they probably don't like the idea of only being created as a punishment very much. They're ruled by only two: the king, Drakov, and his daughter/the princess, Natasha. The queen really _was_ assassinated, so hopefully the marriage between Natasha and one Peter Parker is successful, considering that black widow-females tend to be very threatening to simple red-headed mouse spider-males.

Basically, out of the five kingdoms, the only ones that are actually very social with each other are the dragons and the werewolves, so unless there's an issue that concerns everyone, the other three kingdoms don't get brought up very much.

Stiles sighs unhappily when the sun dips below the trees, knowing that he has to get back to the palace to get ready for tonight's dinner. He's usually allowed to skip out on it since it's just his family, the servants, and some of his friends, but tonight they're having an actual _feast_ because it was Cora Hale's seventeenth birthday yesterday and they've invited the Hale's over to celebrate (they would have done it yesterday, but who wants to go out of kingdom on their birthday? How boring). Stiles' remembers her birthday last season cycle, though, and wants to cringe, because she kept talking about how she's a season cycle older and a season cycle closer to death. Their family is…very different from each other. While Stiles and his parents act about the same, all five of the Hale's are completely different in personality. Talia practically acts like a grandma the way she calls everybody "dear" and "darling", but she's also very powerful—so powerful that she can morph into a full wolf if she wants. Peter is a horrendous flirt, and though Stiles isn't sure how they met, he's always requesting to speak to Gerard (one of the servents) before he leaves once the feast is over. It makes Stiles a little uneasy for such a creepy wolf to be hanging around an old man with swords, but he never voices those concerns. Laura never wears anything but black but throws you off when she's as sweet as her mother, Derek is basically a rock with how often he talks (basically never) and the way that he's built, and Cora is that creepy kid that dresses in lots of bright colors but then talks about the best way to murder somebody with nothing but a human thumb.

Stiles stands before pushing his wings out, followed by taking to the sky so he can rise above the trees and fly straight to his balcony on the castle. The perks of being an alpha are, while the beta dragons are either fire or ice, Stiles gets to be both—not to mention that they can change the color of their scales. Stiles, being a fan of fire, usually keeps his scales red; his mother likes ice better, so she's a crystal blue, and his dad likes both so he's a bit of a multicolored blob of red, white, _and_ blue.

Stiles lands on his balcony before pulling his wings back into his shoulder blades, and he's instantly greeted by his best friend, Scott (who is one of the friends that lives in the castle, including his mother, Melissa), and Allison Argent. While Allison is Scott's girlfriend, she was already Stiles' main servant before they met. The Argent's have been servants to the Stilinski's for generations, and though that may be a low thing in any other kingdom, it's a revered job in Beacon Sky. Her father, Chris, is under Patrick, and her mother and aunt, Victoria and Kate, are under Claudia. His parents "gave" him Allison since they're the closest in age, but Stiles sort of wishes he would have her grandpa (Gerard, who's basically retired, though his sword collection is certainly something to marvel at) instead for the awkward moments they used to have when helping him get dressed in some stupid fancy outfit or making sure his bathwater was warm. They're used to it now, at least.

"_There_ you are!" Allison grumbles at him, jumping up from the bed. "I thought you were going to be late again!"

Stiles flits a wrist, moving to the clothes she has laid out for him. "Please, as if the Hale's even care. They didn't even notice me sneak in last time."

"Prince Derek did," Scott says, though he's definitely trying not to laugh. Scott always laughs at Stiles' jokes, even when they're not funny. "He had a tiny little smirk at the corner of his mouth."

"Prince Derek? Good. He never talks, which means he won't tell anybody." He looks back at Allison. "I don't have to take a bath, do I?"

She points to his adjoining room, a floor made with tile instead of wood and rugs so it's not the end of the world when he spills water of the edge of the bathtub. The chamber pot is in there as well, but his mother's father helped come up with a way to "flush" such activities down pipes and out into the very back of the kingdom, deep under the ground. Stiles feels bad for the villagers that get to work down there, but they get paid very well. No one actually uses money in this kingdom (though every family does keep a few gold coins and jewels around for both decorations and as a reminder to the histories), but Stiles' parents make sure that those with the harder jobs have the nicer houses and get plenty of food and fresh water to clean themselves. Not to say that those with "easier" jobs have tiny houses, no; everything in Beacon Sky is splendorous.

Stiles groans and trudges in, followed by both her and Scott. Scott just leans against a wall and talks to them both while Allison pours buckets over his head every once in a while to rinse off the soap that he scrubbed over himself. Thing great thing about being part fire dragon (or even being just a fire dragon, like Scott) is that you can just blow into the water and heat it up. The nice thing about being an ice dragon (like Allison), though, is that you can cool it down during the hot days and also freeze the ponds and lakes in the forests to ice skating.

"Think they'll have the same seating arrangements as usual?" Scott asks, still in his usual clothes. This party will just be the royalty and the servants, so Scott and the other friends of the castle will have to stay in their rooms in case anyone decides to wander the halls.

Stiles snorts. "It's been the same for three season cycles; I really doubt they'll change it now."

"Gonna actually _talk_ to Prince Derek this time?"

Another snort. "Doubtful."

The seating arrangement is always with Patrick beside Peter, Talia beside him, Claudia beside her, an empty head of the table, and then Laura across from Claudia, Derek across from Talia, Stiles across from Peter, and Cora across from Patrick. The Argent's don't eat with them either when the Hale's are over, but stand against the wall with tiny little smirks on their faces. The Argent's and the Hale's have never really gotten along for whatever reason, so usually the Stilinski's try to just celebrate over in Beacon Moon to avoid any awkward confrontations.

"He's like a stone," Allison says, shaking her head as she laces up the back of Stiles' shirt. He usually just wears a long sleeve with a little V of laces at the neck, black trousers, and boots, but for these "fancy international dinners" he ends up in fancy jackets and trousers without pockets and boots that lace up to his damn knees and clack against the tile. He's just glad he doesn't have to wear any feathers, at any rate. Queen Talia always wears tons of fur shawls and things, but Stiles is _not_ about to play up bird feathers for the "flying look".

"It's better than sand," Scott says with a shrug.

Allison rolls her eyes. "That didn't even make sense, Scott."

Stiles laughs anyway, and Scott gives him a thankful nod. Sometimes the two boys gang up on the servant, sometimes it's Scott and Allison against Stiles, and _very_ rarely it's Allison and Stiles against Scott. Everybody loves Scott. There are others who live in the castle as well that are just friends besides Scott and Melissa, too. Well, the others aren't exactly _Stiles'_ friends, but Allison likes them a lot, and he likes making the servants happy when they've got to sit around and cook food and fill up bathtubs (they don't _only_ have Argent servants, but their family is a part of the group). There's Lydia (who is _gorgeous_. but totally out of Stiles' league—which shouldn't even be possible when Stiles is a _prince_), Jackson (her boyfriend, which is another reason that Stiles doesn't get to have her), and Jackson's best friend (who Stiles really is very good friends with) Danny.

"Alright, you're ready!" Allison says brightly. "Just in time, too. You have just long enough to walk out and sit in your stupid little throne beside your dad."

Stiles grins as she pushes at him. "You have to come with me, you know."

"Not until you sit down at the table and you know it. Get out so I can kiss Scott goodbye."

Stiles gives an overdramatic look of disgust as he walks out, but it instantly turns real when he hears the way his shoes click. "Royalty," he mutters, adjusting the collar of his jacket. The laces in the back of his shirt are a little tight, but Allison probably did it on purpose so he couldn't wriggle out of it during dinner. He did that last time and stuffed the shirt into his boot so he could just wear the jacket. It's a very soft jacket.

"There you are!" his mother exclaims as he walks into the room. The walls are lined with non-Argent servants, though Chris is currently talking to Patrick from behind the giant king throne. "I was beginning to worry about you."

"Come on, mom," Stiles says, giving her cheek an air kiss so he doesn't mess up her make-up. "You should have more faith in Allison than that."

"I know, I know, but that one time—"

"Was a _season cycle_ ago. If anybody notices it they don't remember it now. It's fine. I'm growing up, remember? Soon I'll even be able to dress myself."

His dad and Chris both snort at him. "Not likely," Chris says.

Stiles smirks at him. "I'm not the one with a nineteen season cycle old daughter that's currently dating an eighteen season cycle old male." She soaks in the disgusted/horrified look that Allison's father gives him with a grin, followed by flitting over to drop into the smaller throne beside his father's. His crown is hanging on the arm rest, so he swings it up and drops it onto his head.

"I hate this thing," he mutters. "Why do I have to have an _emerald_ in the middle? I hate green."

"Shut up and be thankful for the diamonds and sapphires, son," his dad says with a wink.

Stiles gives him a good natured eye roll. "Sorry, dad."

"Ah-ah!" his mother says to him, waving a finger. "Remember what you have to call us in front of the werewolves, now."

Stiles gives a real eye roll. "Sorry, mother. Sorry, father."

She nods. "There. Much more regal."

Very short later, one of the other servants walks into the room. "Your majesties, I present to you…" He spins around and holds an arm out. "The Hale's!"

Stiles and his parents rise as the five Hale's walk in, the whole room smiling brightly—except for Derek, who never smiles at anything. Even Cora is smiling, though her eyes are just a little too wide for it to be normal looking.

"Claudia, darling!" Talia says exuberantly, enveloping her in a hug. "It's been _ages_. Come, come, my family is ravenous, and we have much to discuss about nothing that matters at all."

Stiles can't help but exchange a little grin with his dad. They love Talia, but it's just odd to know that, while she acts so…well, like that, she's actually the very best military strategists of her time. She straightens right up as soon as her people are in danger, but in the meantime, she's the sweetest thing.

"Come," his father says, motioning the others after his wife and the werewolf queen. "The feast awaits."

Stiles pits himself in the back of the group, Peter and Laura just after his father and Derek and Cora just in front of him. Halfway to the dining hall, Cora turns her head around and starts walking backwards. Her dress is poofy and intricate and, as usual, doused in so many colors that it sort of looks like she was vomited on.

"Do I get to see the old Argent's swords this time?" she asks, eyes wide and beta yellow.

Stiles is about to apologize because they're private to Gerard himself, but Derek beats him to it by grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around.

"Don't be rude, Cora" he says haughtily, not even turning around to make eye contact with Stiles. "You've only a season cycle till you're of age."

Cora eyes him darkly. "Only _four_ more season cycles and I'll be the same age as you."

"Cora, no matter how many season cycles we stay alive, you will _always_ be four season cycles younger than me. You're not going to age faster by eating _bronze_ apples."

Stiles can't help but snort a little at the joke. Idunn's golden apples of immortality are long since destroyed by the gods themselves, of course, but they're still in the histories.

Derek actually turns around at that, a quizzical look on his face.

Stiles manages a look both polite _and_ smug. "My apologies," he says with a very fake dip of his head. His mother would be proud. "I should not have been eavesdropping."

Derek simply nods in response before looking away again, and by that time they're all in the dining hall. The servants are all standing against the wall now, and Stiles makes eye contact with Allison before motioning to his own lips to let her know that her lipstick is a little smudged. She blushes slightly and quick uses the reflection of her empty tray to fix it, and Stiles smiles to himself as he sits down.

The toast is short and sweet, and introductions are of course skipped since they've all known each other for many season cycles. Stiles remembers the very first feast with them at the age of seven, so he was never able to meet the king before his death—meet and remember him, anyway.

"So, Prince Stiles—" Laura says to him around Derek's gigantic chest.

And, like every time, Stiles gives her a light chuckle and asks her to "please, call me Stiles". She's the only one that still calls him by "prince" except for Talia, who insists on formalities out of her own mouth.

Laura gives a polite nod of her head. "Of course. Your eighteenth birthday is coming soon, correct?"

Stiles nods in return. "Yes, in two weeks."

Cora leans right up to him so that her mouth is beside his ear, but instead of whispering she talks in a normal volume: "I'm almost as old as you."

Peter throws an apple slice at her so that she leans away, and though Claudia gives Stiles _that look_ (the "if you laugh at that I swear to the gods I will skin you alive and wear your skin as a shawl" look, which Stiles gets quite a lot of at these feasts that the Hale's are invited to) he manages to keep his smiles to himself, but he does notices that the corner of Derek's own mouth turns up. Maybe he's a soft stone or something. If stones were soft, anyway…

"Excuse my sister," Laura says in continuation. "My mother would like to invite you to celebrate with us a day after the actual date as we are now doing for Cora, if you would like."

Stiles gives a polite look before looking over at his parents. "I will be eighteen, yes, but I still must ask my mother and father."

They take that as asking, and Claudia smiles and nods.

Stiles smiles back at Laura. "I would love to."

She and Talia clasp their hands together. "Lovely!" Talia says. "We shall begin preparations at once. Tell me, Prince Stiles, darling, because I've forgotten… Are you a chocolate or vanilla boy?"

Stiles smiles warmly at her. "Chocolate, thank you."

"Chocolate," Cora hisses.

"Don't worry, dear," Claudia says, eyes crinkling in a smile Stiles knows very well to be the one she gives when she wants to look on in horror. "Yours is vanilla."

Stiles is pretty sure that Cora has never looked happier.


	2. Chapter 2

[Chapter summary: In which Stiles and Derek find out that they've totally been faking it to make it and Stiles likes the real werewolf prince a hell of a lot better than he thought he did.]

**Chapter 2**

_2 Days Later  
Day 3…_

Stiles loves being a dragon. He loves the rush of the air against his skin as he soars through the sky. He loves the touch of moistness when he dives through a cloud. He's not doing that right now, though, because he loves hunting even more than that. The way _he_ does it, anyway, weaponless but for his own claws and fangs. He's sick of riding a damn horse through the woods with the Hale's. He wants to sink his teeth into things! He wants to tear apart an unsuspecting deer and watch its blood rip out and eat its raw flesh and he's glad that nobody else can see him do it because it is not very prince-like _whatsoever_.

He laughs, standing up from his kill and wiping the back of his hand across his mouth to get some of the blood away. He's in the part of the International Forest between his kingdom and Beacon Moon, and these trees and shrubs are the deer's favorites, so there's _way_ too many of them. Sometimes during the winter the dragons have to impose a treaty thingy to only kill a certain amount of food so that everybody will have enough, but in the warmer months there's _plenty_ to go around. Too much, and that's why Stiles could just rip this doe apart and only take a few bites and it still be justifiable. He could smell that she didn't have any young or else he would have chosen another one.

He laughs again when he sees his clothes, absolutely covered in blood. He knows how to make a clean kill when he wants one, but this is sport, which means ruining old clothes with animal blood.

"Oh."

Stiles snaps his head up, eyes wide as he looks across the clearing of the pond that he's at. It's Derek. Prince Derek freaking Hale. "Uh, I was just, I…" He trails off from his excuse, though, when he sees that the werewolf has a doe over his shoulder, and he's almost covered in even more blood than Stiles is (and that's saying something). "_Oh_ yourself."

Derek gives one of those smiles that just barely curves up the corner of his mouth. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No," Stiles says, shaking his head. "I was done. You too, I see."

Derek looks at his kill and nods. "I don't like the way my shoes click against the floor either."

Stiles laughs, and he grabs out one more mouthful of the deer before pushing a bloody hand through his hair. "No wonder you never talked before," Stiles says when he gets to him, looking at the young buck over his shoulder. "You hated it even more than I did."

"It's dreadful, yes," the werewolf says. Then, quickly, "No offense, of course."

Stiles flits a wrist. "We're royal prince's that are covered in deer blood in the middle of international territory. We passed formalities the moment you said 'oh'." He grins up at the wolf and holds out his bloodstained hand. "Nice to meet the real you."

Derek looks down at the hand with a raised eyebrow. "Real me?" he asks, shaking it tentatively.

Stiles nods and takes a step back. "The you that let's yourself go. You know, the you that's covered in blood." He gestures to Derek's body. "I hear the ladies love it."

Derek raises his other eyebrow. "And this is…the real you?"

Stiles gives an overdramatic bow. "The real heir to an entire kingdom, at your service." He stands back straight. "You can start a petition to kick me off the throne as soon as it's mine."

The corner of Derek's mouth turns up again. "I think the kingdoms could use a little bit of blood."

Stiles starts to laugh, but then he frowns, and Derek frowns with him.

"That's not what I meant," the wolf says with a concentrated look.

Stiles laughs more anyway. Blood in war? Definitely not. "I know what you meant."

Derek nods. "Good." He shifts the buck around a little. "Anyway, I should…get going."

Stiles frowns a little. "You're not going to eat that?" he asks, motioning to it.

Derek shakes his head. "I already had its mate. This is for Laura. She doesn't like to hunt."

Stiles snorts. "What kind of an animal doesn't like to hunt?"

"The arachnids and merfolk don't. Arachnids catch and trap and merfolk only eat the meat of eels."

Stiles presses his lips together. "Merfolk are mostly vegetarian? Really?"

Derek nods. "They don't teach you that in your kingdom?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "I'm sure they did, but I don't pay attention to things very well."

Derek gives him a tight look. "Maybe I _should_ start a petition."

Stiles smirks a little. "Watch me closer and you'll change your mind. So I don't know a couple things about some of the kingdoms—as if _you_ actually know everything. I've seen the merfolk hunting things, so I just assumed." He shrugs. "Obviously I assumed wrong."

The wolf gives a little nod. "You did. I should go. Laura is expecting me."

Stiles shakes his head. "Wait, wait, one thing."

Derek huffs through his nose. "You're wondering abut Cora."

It's not a question, so Stiles has the decency to look guilty. "Uh, yeah."

He nods, and his stone expression turns the tiniest bit softer. "She's not so bad when you get to know her. She just…" He frowns a little, and the stone face is back as he shifts the deer again. "She got dropped a lot."

Stiles blinks up at him for a moment before he realizes that Derek is lying. But Stiles knows that kind of lie; the kind you give when you would rather die then tell the truth. So he just goes with it, breathing a little laugh.

"Me too, but I guess not quite as much. The height might have made up for that, though. I _am_ a bit of an idiot."

Derek looks down at him with a face contorted in both confusion and amusement.

Stiles chuckles. "Alright, alright, get out of here. Tell your sisters I sai—actually, no, don't. We probably shouldn't announce the fact that the only prince's in our kingdoms are out getting doused in blood together. I mean, not together, but…" He shrugs as he lets his red wings out. "We saw each other. I'll see you in your kingdom for my birthday party, yeah? Try not to make it as awkward as Cora's was." He laughs, taking a few more steps back. "And _talk_ for once, you stony sourwolf." And then he's leaping upwards, waving goodbye to that same confused and amused expression before he soars away from it.

**XxX**

_4 Days Later  
Day 7…_

Just as Stiles said, he didn't tell anyone that he ran into Derek. He just grinned at Allison's appalled face and Scott's grin and then washed himself up for supper. He goes back into the woods a couple of days later for another bask in the sun (it's what he gets for being coldblooded), and though he wouldn't admit he was listening for any hunting, he didn't hear any of it. It's not all that surprising considering that Stiles has been hunting for season cycles in these International Woods and he has _just now_ run into Derek. It'll probably be a few more season cycles before they happen to see each other again.

But maybe not, because Stiles was doing loops through the clouds a moment ago, but now he's spiraling slowly downwards towards an unrecognizable movement through the trees. He drops down in a shady spot (just like everywhere else) and looks around, _not_ drenched in blood today. There's a couple of drops from the buck that he actually ate earlier, but he made that a clean kill so Allison wouldn't have to wash him up again.

"Hello?" he calls. "'Rek?"

Stiles knows it's a little far with the nickname, but it totally works, because red eyes glow through the shade before Derek steps out of it. "Did you just—"

"Yup," Stiles says, cutting him off. "What if it wasn't you? I didn't want just anybody to know that we're blood buddies."

Derek's brows furrow back into that confused, amused look that Stiles decides he loves. "_Blood buddies_?"

"Dude, come on, we both have speckles on our sleeves and that's it. And four days ago we were drenched in it." He crouches down before leaping up to a close tree branch and wrapping his legs around it to hang upside down, putting his wings away so they don't get in the way. "Forget the ladies; I think we're drawing in each other."

The werewolf wrinkles his nose up. "Do you actually have friends?"

Stiles shrugs. "A few. Dated someone once, too. Old hearts, though." He drops down in front of him. "So, out for another deer for Laura?"

Derek shakes his head. "Just…walking."

"Can't walk in your own kingdom?"

"I'm sick of the trees in my kingdom."

Stiles raises both hands. "Amen, brother." He lowers them. "Say, do you like sunbathing?"

Derek frowns. "I—what?"

"How about waterfalls? 'Cause I know this great place right in the middle of all the kingdoms that gets really lonely sometimes."

Derek stares at him for what feels like ages before finally raising an eyebrow. "There are places in the International Forest that the sun gets through?"

Stiles laughs. "Come on," he says, turning around. "It's totally great."

Derek looks skeptical, but he does come, though tentatively. It's funny seeing someone so big and tough looking act so shy and quiet. Stiles likes him. He should go hunting more often.

"Ta-duh!" he yells above the falls. "My semi-paradise! The water from here drains into this big pond thing. I don't know if it does it naturally or if the arachnids did it, but it's probably a good thing so that none of the kingdoms with enemies can poison the water that goes into those kingdoms."

Derek nods as he looks around the area, obviously surprised by it. "I don't ever come out this far," he says. "The werecats don't like us and merfolk keep to themselves, so we've never had to meet with them on international territory."

Stiles nods. "I don't have any specific reason to come out here either," he says, "but I do anyway. I've got Beacon Sky down like the back of my wing, so it's every inch of the International Forest next."

"That's a good quality," Derek says. "Much better than your impression from yesterday."

Stiles cocks an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, _who_ else was covered in blood with me?"

The wolf's mouth does that corner curve thing. "Did _you_ bring food back when done? No, you left it there."

Stiles grins. "Mountain lions gotta eat too." He walks over to the falls, standing beneath them. This water comes from his own kingdom, so the waterfall is very high, which means it would probably break his neck if he was any weaker. He just drinks some of it and lets his wings out, turning them white so they blend in with the frothy spray.

Derek frowns when he walks out from under the water, looking him over. "I thought your wrings were red."

Stiles cocks an eyebrow as he tucks them away. "They were."

Both of the wolf's eyebrows rise. "Dragons can change the color of their scales?"

Stiles nods, stripping off his soaking wet shirt. "It's an alpha thing. We try to keep it under wraps since it's sort of useless and we don't need the villagers thinking we have even more unnecessary treasures, you know? Peasants an' all."

Derek stares down at him, and Stiles stays silent for a grand total of four seconds before rolling his eyes.

"I'm kidding," he says, dropping down to sit on the stone slab to the right of the pool from the falls. "Geez, do you ever smile?"

Derek frowns. "I smile."

Stiles snorts. "Hardly." He tugs lightly at one of Derek's trouser legs. "I guess it doesn't matter, if it's really not your thing."

Derek gives his hand an odd look before sitting down as well, a few feet away, and keeps his shirt _on_. He's tan enough, so he doesn't really need to try—so is Stiles, though, but his cold blood doesn't keep it for very long.

"Anyway," Stiles says as he lies down on his back to dry off. "It is true that only we alphas can change the color of our scales, but the villagers know about it. Can your alphas do anything that betas can't? The only thing we learn about wolves in Beacon Sky are in the histories, and those don't exactly cover anatomy. Not, like, your alpha forms, but just…something small."

Derek purses his lips. "Besides the full alpha form, we just have different colored eyes. Yellow is the beta color, you have blue if you're a beta that's killed an innocent life, and red for alphas."

"Ooh, show me. I mean, I've seen them red before, but not up close."

The wolf rolls his eyes, but Stiles can see the pride in them as they melt from jade to a bright, blood red.

"Wow," Stiles says, leaning closer. "I can actually see the veins pulsing."

"I can see the vein in your neck pulsing, too," Derek says, pushing him away. "Personal space, please."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Sorry, _your majesty_."

Derek actually gives a bit of a smirk. "That's more like it."

Stiles breathes a laugh. "You're the type of prince that works his servants to death, aren't you?"

"Yes, but that's what they're paid for, so they don't complain. I know all of them by name, if that makes you feel any better."

Stiles flits a wrist. "I only have one servant that's for me specifically, and she happens to be my best friend's girlfriend, so my best friend is around more often than not. The only time he actually helps, though, is if I need extra tissues for a cold."

Derek frowns. "Dragons can get sick?"

Stiles raises an eyebrow at him. "We're coldblooded, remember? It's harder to stay healthy for us. The city actually has certain times of warm days for groups at a time to bask in the light in the middle of the day so we can warm ourselves up, and on days where the whether sucks we have buildings that have gathered the sun to act as…well, basically a sauna. We need heat to survive just like you guys, but the difference is that you can make most of it yourself."

All of the sudden a howl rings through the woods, and Derek's head snaps up. "That's my mother," he says, standing. "I need to go."

Stiles nods, standing as well. "Yeah, alright. Are you gonna be out later this week?"

Derek frowns a little, pulling his shirt back on. "I probably shouldn't."

Stiles pouts out his bottom lip. "Come on, it's fun! I'll become king and since we're friends you'll be able to talk Laura into doing away with faking our way through dinner. Think about it. No more clicky shoes!"

Derek actually looks a little torn about the idea, but before he can answer, another howl rips through the woods. He faces his kingdom and, eyes glowing red, howls right back. It was loud enough from Talia's vocal cords, but with Derek _right here_ Stiles has to cover his ears.

"I need to go," the wolf says again, staring to walk away.

"Two days, sourwolf!" Stiles yells after him. "I'll be waiting!"

Derek doesn't answer, but that doesn't mean he won't come.

**XxX**

_Day 7-8…_

Stiles is bored stiff when he leaves the waterfall, but he supposes it's not as bad as it could be. He spends a lot of time with Scott, Allison, Danny, Lydia, and Jackson to pass the time, and the night before he's going out to the forest again, Scott notices.

"You seem kind of jumpy, man," he says. "What's up?"

"Huh?" Stiles says even though he heard him loud and clear.

"Are you just excited for your birthday in a week?" Allison asks.

Stiles decides for the millionth time that he could easily be in love with Allison, and he nods. "It's weird that I'll be coming of age soon," he lies.

"It's not so bad," Scott says. "Allison and I barely even noticed."

Stiles sighs, continuing his lie. "It is for royalty. The party's going to go all night."

"You love all-night parties," Allison points out.

Stiles shrugs. "Not when they're for me."

"They're almost all your idea, though," Scott says.

Stiles flits a wrist. "Not important."

"Well, you'll be okay at the party tomorrow night, right?" Allison asks. "Because if not I can—"

Stiles shakes his head. "I'll be fine, Allison. I'll totally be there. Go to bed."

They mutter their own goodnights from their cots on the floor. It's normal for them to stay in here, leaving their own rooms empty. Stiles likes it.

**XxX**

_Day 9…_

Stiles doesn't mean to, but he wakes up early the next day—early enough to ditch his friends on the floor and fly up to the top of the castle and watch the sunrise. It rises out of volcanic mountains beyond all the kingdoms, though closest to Beacon Wave. Stiles loves fire, and he loves that his alpha eyes allow him to stare right into bright things without damaging them. Fire beta dragons can do it too, but within reason.

He flies back to his room once it's up and boring looking, and he means to just get dressed, but he ends up dropping back into his bed and passing out again. Allison wakes him up for breakfast, at least, and then after lunch he has to make an excuse to ditch off by himself. Usually he just tells the truth that he's going to take a nap in the sun, but now he gets to lie about it.

He flies around a lot before dropping down on his usual slab of rock, and right away he sees Derek sitting under the shade of a tree with a fox up to his mouth.

"Ew," Stiles says, wrinkling his nose up.

Derek's mouth-corner curves. "Not a thin meat kind of person, I take it?"

He shakes his head. "Deer and the buffalo's that usually stick to Beacon Wave and Hole are my favorite."

The wolf nods, pushing up to move into the sun with the orange furred mammal. "Shame you can't hunt in other kingdoms."

Stiles strips his shirt off. "Shame indeed. What'd your mom want—er, Queen Talia want?"

"Wolf things," Derek says. And this time he pulls his shirt off too, and Stiles definitely has to force his eyes not to widen, because _damn_, that is a seriously toned upper half.

Stiles gets the hint that it's not something Derek's going to tell him, what his mom wanted, so he just changes the subject: "I thought I felt inadequate standing next to you with your clothes _on_."

Derek gives him a confused look before his mouth-corner curves again. "You look fine. I'm just bigger than you."

Stiles isn't sure if he should blush or not, so he shrugs and drops down to the stone. "You're only a few inches taller, though."

"Obviously we do different workouts," the wolf says, sitting down as well. "Mine consists of everything out there. Pull-ups, push-ups, jogs, lifting…" He waves a hand and leans back on the rock as well. Stiles is glad that he's staring to trust him a little more so that he can actually do this and not just blink a lot. "All that stuff."

Stiles hums, looking up at the blue of the sky. He loves summer. "All I do is fly and dance."

Derek raises an eyebrow at him, and Stiles expects him to ask about the dancing (Stiles really does love parties, after all; he probably should have thought his lie through a little bit more), but he doesn't: "What does flying work?"

Stiles buzzes his lips. "Stomach, chest, back, and shoulders. The front is from all of the dives, because you have to arch your body just right to make sure that you curve up before you just splat against the ground. Then it gets your back because when your wings are pumping…" He let's out a low whistle. "It works your _entire_ back, and your shoulders if you're flying straight up long enough. It's not just something you can learn as easy as walking."

"How does it work, anyway?" Derek asks. "Do you just…think about it and they move?"

Stiles snorts. "Not like that, no. It's just like having extra arms that can't pick anything up but are really great and blocking out the rain. They move in the same way, you know? You burn your hand and then jerk away, right? Our wings do the same—well, not fire dragons, but that was just an example. They're just as clumsy, too, if we're not careful. Clumsy dragons are the worse because they've got clumsy wings attached to them. Most of us just keep them away unless we're flying somewhere or washing them off."

Derek wrinkles his nose up. "You mean, if they're caked in mud and you put them away…they're still caked in mud when you bring them back out?"

Stiles nods. "That's why I stood under the waterfall the other day. The white also helped to see the dirt easier."

"It sounds very complicated."

"It is if you're not used to it. Some of my own kind hasn't even gotten the hang of it yet. It's not easy having wings." He snorts a laugh. "One time I fell asleep when they were still out and the entire left one went numb. It was terrifying. I wasn't even able to move it."

"Just like an arm. It just hung there."

He nods. "It took a while for the entire thing to get blood back to it, too." Stiles looks over at the wolf just in time to see a smile just a little bit bigger than his usual corner curve. It's cute.

"All I can picture is you walking around with only one wing away and the other hanging lifeless behind you," he says.

Stiles laughs. "You're pretty close. It wasn't long enough that I had to leave my room, though."

Derek nods. "I've seen you fly. You're good at it. I've never thought about how you actually had to teach yourself that before, though."

"Yeah, but it's not for lack of trying. Usually the only things I end up doing are flying, hunting, or sunbathing."

"Shame I couldn't fly with you."

"I would say I could carry you, but I really doubt I'm strong enough for that. Maybe if you were Cora's size, but even then it's hard enough to lift my own body into the air. Have you ever had a dream that you could fly, and it's like…you just have to keep jumping and jumping and you can still only get into the air by a few feet?"

Derek nods.

"It's like that at first. Your wings are _very_ weak when you've never flown before, and just like if you don't keep up your body, if you don't fly around enough they'll grow weak. We have a lot of festivals, mostly just to give people an excuse to get off of the ground and race to the top of the castle or something. 'Cause, I mean, what's a kingdom of dragons when we can't even fly? That'd be like arachnids without their webbing. It's stupid."

Derek hums in thought, staring up at the sky.

"Do you guys have difficulty doing anything?" Stiles asks.

"Not like that, no. We only ever have four appendages at a time. It takes a while to learn how to control yourself under the full moon, but even that while is just a few months. Everyone in Beacon Moon is a born werewolf, so we don't have the same troubles with human-turned werewolves as we did thousands of season cycles ago."

"Yeah, that's convenient. We don't have any humans left, either."

Derek hums again, now looking away from the sky and over to Stiles. "Did you also say…dancing?"

Stiles laughs. "Yes. Yes, I did. The festivals have that, too, but that's not usually where it's from. At least once every two weeks—sometimes more—the dragons around my age get together in the woods behind the castle for little…parties, for lack of a better word. We just all get together with lots of candles and loud music and food and stuff. Sometimes my best friend and I play in the band for it, but more often it's his girlfriend. She's a _killer_ violinist."

Derek blinks a bit. "I've never heard such a term for that instrument."

Stiles shrugs. "Everything is pretty killer in Beacon Sky. We mostly use violins, different types of drums, and one of my three real friends manages to make the harp sound pretty great, too. The friend who plays the harp even invented this weird tube thing that, if you push it far enough down your throat, it makes your voice sound pretty cool too."

Derek blinks some more, but now his eyebrows are furrowed as well. "That sounds terrible."

"Pff," Stiles says, flitting a wrist. "Do you guys really only dance to the waltz or something?"

Derek shakes his head. "No, but it stays that slow. We use harps and violins too, but we don't have any…drums. Flutes and other similar things. It's all very quiet."

Stiles suddenly gets the most amazing idea in the world. "We're totally having one of the parties tonight! You should come! And then, maybe some other time I can come out to you and see what _your_ music is like. It'll be great!"

The wolf mashes his lips together, his look both skeptical and concerned. "I don't think I should."

"Oh, come on, our kingdoms move around freely all the time. There's even a road through the International Forest for it! Nobody's even going to notice you. I'm the prince and the only time they even look at me is when I'm up on the stage in the band. Besides, hardly anybody actually knows what you look like, which means you'll blend in even better! Well, except for your smell, but I've got scents to mask it." He grins and sits up to look down at the wolf. "Come on, it'll be awesome. Please?"

Derek keeps that same look plastered on his face for a while, and he eventually sits up as well. "I would have to make sure my mother was okay with it."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "Aren't you, like, twenty-one?"

"And my mother is the queen. Even you'll still have to obey _your_ mother when _you_ turn eighteen next week, right?"

Stiles presses his lips into a thin line. "Good point. You will ask her, though, right? I mean, you won't just go back home and just pretend to ask her and then lie that she said you couldn't? Because it really is great. Maybe it won't be your type of music, but that doesn't matter when you've got a thousand bodies writhing in a gigantic clearing in the woods. My friends were just making fun of me last night about how much I love going to them."

Derek sits there for a moment later, worrying a hole into Stiles' forehead with his aching jade eyes. "Okay," he says. "I'll come."

Stiles whoops and drops onto his back again. He _loves_ the sun. "Where should I meet you? 'Cause you can't just walk out into the back of the woods without being questioned. I mean, because of your smell. I'll bring stuff to cover it up."

The wolf nods as he lies back down as well. "Maybe…the middle of the road between the International Forest between our kingdoms?"

"Yeah, that's easy. Nobody will be on it during the night anyway. Meet me there at sundown, okay?"

"Sundown exactly, or you mean when the sun is down enough that it's completely dark."

"Sundown. It moves fast, so it gives us enough time to get you ready. Make sure you wear something you can move easily in."

Derek pushes his hands up underneath his head for a pillow. "I move easily in these."

Stiles looks over the clothes, noticing that they're very similar to his own. It's not surprising, considering that their kingdoms trade so many things, clothes included. "Yeah, those work. I'll just be wearing these, too."

"Should I…bring anything? You said there's food."

Stiles snorts. "No, don't bring anything but yourself. Actually… No, no, that would bring too much attention to you."

"Attention or not, the idea might be an interesting muse in the meantime."

"I was going to ask if you play any instruments or if you're any good at singing."

Derek huffs through his nose. "Not exactly."

Stiles can't help but laugh. "I didn't figure, you being all quiet and tough looking all the time."

"I'm not so quiet around people that I know well."

"You better know me well enough to laugh by the time my birthday rolls along then."

Derek rolls his eyes. "Do you play anything?"

"I usually play the drums if I help out, but every once and a while my best friend and I break out on vocals."

Derek gives an amused look. "Are you any good?"

"Drums, yeah. Singing?" He shrugs. "Probably not by myself. My best friend and I compliment each other pretty well, and sometimes one of the two that I'm not really friends with out of my five joins in with us and we're a triplet of the old gods."

The wolf stretches his arms up before rolling onto his side, propping his head up with his hand. "What are the names of your friends, then? You talk about them enough. I might as well know who they are if I ever meet them."

Stiles grins. "My best friend's name is Scott, and his girlfriend—also my specific servant—is Allison. The friend of mine that plays the harps is Danny, and one time I was kinda drunk and we made out, but…" He shrugs. "Whatever." Derek doesn't comment, so Stiles continues: "Danny's best friend is this horrible mean guy named Jackson, who thinks he's the best thing in the entire world, and he may be better looking than most guys, but it's still annoying. His girlfriend and Allison's best friend is Lydia, and she's is a _gorgeous_ strawberry blonde." He laughs. "I don't even know how many times she rejected me before she started dating Jackson and I finally gave up. Old hearts, anyway.

"Scott is a lot like me but quieter, Allison is super sweet until you piss her off, Danny is the most amazing ball player you will ever meet, Jackson is in the most prestigious family under mine, and Lydia is _brilliant_ but keeps it hidden for some reason. If it were me I'd be showing off all the time. To each their own, I suppose. Who are your friends?"

Derek smiles. It's small and warm and very fond, and Stiles decides that he wants to meet his friends very badly. "Isaac, Erica, and Boyd—who's first name is really Vernon, but he doesn't like it. They're very loyal. My own personal pack, you know? We all usually end up crashing on my bed before they have a chance to leave to their own places in the village. Sometimes it's kind of awkward since they're all dating, but I'm long used to being the fourth wheel."

Stiles gives a little snort of a laugh. "I'm sorry, I've just never heard of someone being the _fourth_ wheel before."

Derek nods. "It's not so bad. Usually just two of them are making out at once and I can have a conversation with the other one."

"Have you ever woken up with all three of them just rolling around on your bed?"

The wolf cringes a little. "Once. I pushed them onto the floor."

Stiles laughs. "What are they like? I mean, individually."

The small, warm, fond smile comes back. "Isaac has this insane curly hair and wide, curious eyes and is very quiet, so the way he gets your attention is just pressing his face against your back or your arm until you look down at him, or he rests his chin on your shoulder or tugs at your sleeve. He fluctuates from being jumpy to so calm that you could threaten his life and he'd just laugh before falling over."

Stiles grins a little. "I think your friend is on the occasional drug, your majesty."

Derek nods. "It's the marijuana leaves."

Stiles frowns. "Marijuana? I don't think we have any of that in my kingdom."

Derek grins. A real, full-blown grin that sort of makes Stiles wand to duck and hide. "Shame."

"What does it do?"

"It, uh…calms you down."

Stiles snorts, looking back up at the sky. "I could definitely use some of that."

The grin widens before washing away. "You definitely could," he says, rolling back onto his back to look up as well.

"What about the other two?" Stiles asks.

The small, warm, fond smile comes back. "Boyd is even quieter than Isaac, but he's the one that always has the snappy comeback. He was the kid in the back of the class that only spoke up when it was something funny, you know? He's bigger than I am. He may not say much, but his voice is deeper than you'd expect, and when he needs to be loud he can practically knock you backwards with nothing but a roar. He, uh…" The smile disappears in a heartbeat and instead looks all of dark, angry, hurt, and sad. "He used to hang out a lot with Cora."

Stiles frowns, pushing up on his elbows. "Did they, like…date?"

Derek shakes his head, jaw tight. "Nothing like that. It's not important. Erica is—"

"Hey, hey." Stiles rolls over onto he's on his stomach, his arms bent under his face like a pillow. "How about, when you've got something that you don't want to explain, you just _tell_ me that. 'Cause I'm going to pry if you just say that it's 'not important'. Things that aren't important are totally important."

Derek blinks over at him, his jaw still tight but his jade eyes soft. "Okay," he says. "I don't want to explain it."

Stiles grins. "I still want to pry, but I try not to be _too_ annoying to people I don't know very well, so I won't. What's Erica like?"

It takes a little longer for the small, warm, fond smile to come back this time, but it does come. "She sounds like a bit of a mash-up of your Allison and Lydia, actually. Sweet until you make her angry, and very smart though she doesn't usually act like it. She'll kick you down in heels, and she's always the one we go to when we have a question that we don't know the answer to. She likes to play with our hair and kiss our foreheads to laugh at the lipstick marks, and she has a privacy level of _zero_. Even before she started dating Boyd and Isaac, she would always invite us to the bathing pool and then forgo any bath ware and just canon ball in—and _then_ she'd insist that one of us scrub the parts of her back that she couldn't reach." He rolls his eyes. "Females."

Stiles giggles a little. He can't even deny it. He giggles. "She, uh…she sounds fun."

Derek gives Stiles a eye roll all for him. "I'm not surprised you think that. I wouldn't suggest flirting with her, though. Isaac may look cute on the outside, but he won't hesitate to slit their throat. All of them are like that." He frowns. "Actually, most of us werewolves are like that."

Stiles nods. "That's not surprising. Dragons are very trustworthy, on the other hand." He frowns. "Except the Argent family. I'm not really sure what got under their skin in the last hundred season cycles."

Derek hums. "I do."

Stiles perks up to look at his face better. "Really?"

The wolf nods.

"Tell me."

"In the generation that signed the treaties between our kingdoms, the head servants were to sign as well, because they were to serve both their own species and of the other. Alexander Argent was the one to sign it, though not without a little bit of forcing by his family members. He was one of those that didn't want there to be a truce because of his hatred for the werewolves."

"Hmm," Stiles says, dropping his head back down on his arms. "Tough."

Derek nods. "He must have been."

They stay like that for ages more, just talking about nothing in particular and also some more about the party. Eventually the sun dips behind the trees, though, and Stiles sighs as the feeling of his body being covered in shade.

"I should probably be getting home," he says, sitting up to stretch.

"As should I," Derek says as he does the same.

Stiles watches the muscles in his chest practically _bubble_ under the strength of the stretch, and he rolls his eyes when Derek notices.

"Shut up," he says before the wolf can say anything.

Derek shoves at his shoulder a little, and it catches Stiles completely off guard, so he topples over onto the rock and just barely catches himself from rolling into the water. When Stiles sits back up to glare at him, Derek is smiling at him. A huge, bright, full-blown smile that crinkles up his eyes as it takes up his entire face.

"You're smiling!" Stiles says brightly, crawling back over to him. "You _do_ smile!"

The smile practically sprints away once it's been brought to attention. "I told you I do."

"Shh, shh, do it again."

Derek raises an eyebrow and leans away from where Stiles is leaning in expectedly. "Remember what I said about personal space?"

"Yes, but I don't care."

The wolf rolls his eyes, though good natured, and puts a hand over Stiles' face to put him away. "I really should get going," he says, grabbing up his shirt as he stands.

Stiles nods and does the same once he rights himself. "I'll see you after the sunset, yeah?"

Derek nods in return before beginning to walk away. Stiles wonders how far he has to go before he gets to the castle. He himself can simply fly above everything, but Derek doesn't have wings, so he actually has to walk the entire way.

"Hey, 'Rek," Stiles says before the wolf disappears into the trees.

Derek turns around, eyebrows raised in question.

Stiles grins. "Thanks for coming. I would have been bored stiff just sitting here."

Derek gives that little curve of the corner of his mouth, one hand resting against the trunk of a tree. "Thanks for giving me something to do besides work out."

Stiles' grin widens. "Anytime, sourwolf."

Derek rolls his eyes before disappearing into the forest, and Stiles unfurls his wings to get back to his own castle.

It's going to be a _long_ night, and it's going to be _awesome_.


	3. Chapter 3

[Chapter summary: In which it's not ONLY Stiles' waterfall, but yeah, it kind of is. Also Stiles and Derek hold hands and dance.]

**Chapter 3**

Quick note: Underwear does not exist and that is all.

* * *

_Day 9…_

"You invited the _werewolf_ prince?" Scott asks, leaning against the balcony railing.

"Shh!" Stiles hisses from where he's perched on the railing instead of just beside it. "I don't want Allison to know. We promised each other not to tell anybody."

Scott shakes his head a little. "You went sunbathing with Prince _Derek_? At _your_ waterfall?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "It's not _my_ waterfall. It's in the middle of the kingdoms. It's everyone's waterfall."

"Whoever's it is, you're the only one that uses it."

"I've had to ditch out from there before. Arachnids have a very dirty smell. No pun intended."

Scott laughs anyway. "Whatever. You're really going to spray him with scale shine?"

"It's the only thing I could think of!"

"It's going to make him feel waxy if you get it on his skin, though."

"I'll just get it on his clothes, Scott."

Allison pokes her head onto the balcony through its doors. "Whose clothes?"

"YOUR BOYFRIENDS CLOTHES!" Stiles yells, holding the can up and laughing maniacally.

Allison rolls her eyes before ducking back inside.

Scott gives a good natured eye roll. "You're so good at that."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "What, lying?"

Scott nods.

Stiles grins. "Thanks."

When Scott goes back inside to take Allison to the party (they're going a little early to set up some things), Stiles waits just a little bit longer before leaping off of the balcony. He circles low above the trees with wings the color of the dark green leaves to blend in a little before dropping down on the edge of the road.

"Hi."

Stiles doesn't mean to, but his beta form snaps out of him at the scare, and he hisses loudly.

Derek gives a wide-eyed look and takes a few steps back, looking Stiles over. Beta forms consist of claws, pointed ears, fangs, yellow eyes with slits for pupils, wings, and also the random patch of scales here and there. Most of Stiles' beta scales cover the back of his body, his ears, some places around his face, and a random patch just around his navel.

"Sorry," the wolf says.

Stiles shakes his head, morphing back into his human form. "No, sorry, that was my fault. I didn't know I landed right beside you and you scared me."

Derek tilts his head a little. "I've never seen a beta form up close before."

Stiles breathes a laugh, pushing a hand through his hair. "They're fun when you're not in mortal danger, I guess." He holds up the can of scale shine. "This should help your dog smell."

Derek frowns, taking the can. "_Scale shine_?" he asks, eyebrows passed his hairline.

"It was the best I had. Don't get it on your skin; it's hell to get off. It'll be hell to get off your clothes, too, but we've got stuff that gets it off pretty easy."

Derek gives the can a concerned look. "It's not going to make my clothes shiny, will it?"

"Yes. Yes, the scale shine will make your clothes shiny. Just do it, would you?"

The wolf does, careful not to get it on his skin. "Did it work?" he asks, looking down at himself. "Because as far as I can tell, I smell terrible."

Stiles sniffs in deeply. "Little more on your left trouser leg."

Derek rolls his eyes and does so.

"Perfect!" He snatches the can back before tossing it towards Beacon Sky. "I'll get that tomorrow." He reaches back and grabs Derek's hand. "Come on, it's going to start soon."

Stiles decides he hates walking and feels very sorry for wingless animals. "The bottoms of trees are so boring," he mutters, looking up as it's almost completely dark.

Derek tugs at his hand a little, and Stiles looks back to see him looking up as well. "We don't have these trees in Beacon Moon. I like them. Here, look." He stops walking and pulls Stiles closer. "I've spent my entire life on the ground." He leans down until his face is level with Stiles', and then points up at one of the trees. "What do you see up there?"

Stiles frowns, looking for something important. "Leaves."

Derek snorts. "Look closer and you'll see a hole in the side. Something lives in it."

Stiles looks over at him to give a _not bad_ sort of look. "Can you tell what lives in it?"

Derek shrugs, standing up straight again. "Not from down here, no."

Stiles grins, realizing they're still holding hands. So he tugs for him to follow him some more. "We're almost there. Can you hear them?"

The werewolf tilts his head a little, moving to walk beside Stiles instead of behind him. "Barely. You call this close?"

Stiles sighs. "It would be close if we were flying."

The corner of Derek's mouth curves up. "You really would be useless without your wings."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "No thanks to you, land walker."

They don't talk the rest of the way; Stiles just glares around a bit and Derek points at things that you'd only notice if you lived on the ground. Eventually they stop, though, just outside of the party clearing. It's dark now, so it's already started. Derek stares out in curiosity at the writhing, dancing bodies.

"Remind you of your sleepovers?" Stiles asks, elbowing him lightly.

Derek huffs through his nose. "No. Wolves don't have much personal space when it comes to other wolves, but this is…" He waves around the hand that's not holding onto Stiles'. "Not the same thing."

Stiles grins. "Prepare to be amazed, then. Also, your new name is Miguel. Don't argue. Go with it."

They're out in the clearing before Derek can protest, and the clearing isn't much of a clearing at all with so many people, so it doesn't take long for them to be smack in the middle of the flickering candlelight that people have strung up in the surrounding trees with wax catchers so the leaves and branches don't catch on fire. Derek looks a little traumatized, but Stiles just laughs at him.

"Just do what everyone else is!" he yells as the wolf above the roar of the crowd.

It doesn't take too long for Derek to just shrug and go with it, and Stiles has to admit that it's pretty hilarious to see someone who's usually so quiet dancing around like an idiot.

"Stiles!"

Stiles spins around to see a girl he knows as Heather, who also happens to be the only ex-girlfriend he's ever had. It was a mutual break-up, so they're still friends. "Heather, hey!" he yells back.

"Who's your friend?" she asks.

Stiles tries not to roll his eyes. He should have known. "This is Miguel."

Derek gives a tight look. "Hi."

She gets the hint. "Nice meeting you!" she says brightly before disappearing off.

Stiles frowns, grabbing Derek's hand again to drag him away from the music so they don't have to yell. The instruments have funnels attached to various places, so the music carries very well.

"What the hell was that?" he asks. "She wanted to dance with you _and_ she's hot."

Derek raises an eyebrow before lowering it and snorting a little. "She's, ah…"

Stiles gives an expectant look. "What? Not your type?"

"She's pregnant."

One of s' knees give out and Derek steadies him. "She's _what_? How can you tell?"

Derek taps his nose. "It's a wolf thing."

"You can _smell_ a pregnancy?"

Derek purses his lips. "It's a little more confusing than that, but in a sense, yes."

Stiles grins. "Ha-ha. Sense."

Derek rolls his eyes. "You dated her, right?"

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "That was season cycles ago. Can you still smell me on her somehow?"

The wolf shakes his head. "You gave her an odd look when she asked me who I was."

Stiles buzzes his lips and looks away. "Have you, like, _not_ noticed all of the looks that you're getting? Danny was staring at you from way up on the _stage_." He points at Danny, currently using Allison's violin bow on the harp. "It's annoying."

Derek gives the tiniest of chuckles. "You're jealous."

Stiles sticks his tongue out. "Suck a cock, your majesty."

The werewolf rolls his eyes and sets a hand on one of Stiles' shoulders. "Come on," he says, steering him back into the crowd. "You're more fun when you're not talking."

Stiles decides to take that as a compliment.

He loses Derek in the throng more than once, but the wolf is fine. He does end up dancing with a couple of people, and Stiles can't stop thinking about what he said about Heather being pregnant. Obviously it's not Stiles' since it's been season cycles since they've dated and her stomach is still completely flat, but that doesn't keep him from wondering who else it could be. He didn't know she was seeing anybody else.

Stiles eventually dances his way to the stage, where he flips onto it to stand beside Danny. Scott sees him and jumps up as well, patting him on the back.

"He's actually dancing!" he yells.

"I know!" Stiles yells back. "Where's Allison?"

Said girlfriend appears between them right then, with Lydia right behind her.

Stiles grins down at Danny as he stops playing. "Give us our favorite, yeah?"

Danny grins as everything goes quiet, waiting for the next song to start, and hands Allison the bow for the violin. "You three gonna sing?" he asks.

"Obviously," Lydia says with a huff.

It only takes a couple more seconds for everyone to get into position, and then the instruments start up before Stiles, Scott, and Lydia start to sing. Definitely like gods when they're all three together, and the crowd cheers loud before staring up their dancing again.

Stiles laughs as he nearly falls off the stage once they're done with the song, Allison and Danny continuing to play so that everyone can keep dancing as well.

"I _love_ parties!" he yells, throwing his arms up and spinning in circles.

Scott laughs and tackles him, sending both of them off of the stage. It hurts a little, but it's nothing that Stiles can't handle.

"You idiot," Stiles says just loud enough for his best friend to hear, pushing him off.

"You're the one that brought a werewolf!" Scott yells back.

Stiles shrugs. "I like him. Besides, you've seen him. He needs to get out more." He stands. "Damn, I wonder where he went…" He looks around as Scott stands up behind him.

"Found him!" his best friend says brightly.

Stiles follows where he's pointing to see Derek dancing with a group of four other people, two of them female and the other two male. Stiles feels another pang of jealousy in his gut, and he frowns at himself. He doesn't even like any of those four people.

Derek happens to look over right then, and Stiles waves brightly. The wolf says something to the four that causes them to pout a little, and Stiles is confused until the other man starts moving towards him. Scott laughs and pats Stiles on the back before jumping back up on the stage, moving to dance with Allison as she plays.

"Having fun?" Stiles asks with a grin.

Derek manages to keep a blank face for a total of two seconds before the corner of his mouth turns up. "I really don't like this music, but yes, I'm having fun."

Stiles laughs. "Come on, it's not that bad."

Derek gives a tiny little fond smile. "Most of it is, yes."

Stiles narrows his eyes to stare up at him better. "Are you giving me a compliment?"

Derek shakes his head. "I'm giving Scott, Lydia, _and_ you a compliment."

Stiles opens his eyes normally and grins. "I knew you were hiding how soft you were somewhere in there." He pokes Derek's chest. "You are _adorable_."

The wolf rolls his eyes. "Do that again and you'll see how adorable I'm _not_."

Stiles chuckles. "Threaten me all you want, but I've already seen you drenched in blood, blood buddy. Anyway, are you, uh…do you want to stay or get going? It's pretty late." He frowns. "Early? The sun is going to rise in a few hours."

Derek presses his lips into a tight line. "I should go, then."

Stiles nods. "I figured. Do you want me to walk you back to the road?"

Derek starts to say no, but Stiles cuts him off:

"Ah, I'm coming anyway." He grabs Derek's hand and drags him into the woods around the clearing. "Ick, I smell terrible."

Derek hums. "You smell like you just danced for hours straight."

Stiles grins at the forest floor as they walk. "You smell bad too, but at least there's no sign of werewolf. Oh, yeah, I'll grab that on the way back."

Derek nods, swinging their arms the tiniest bit. "You won't have near enough fun at the parties of Beacon Moon," he says. "You won't be able to mask your scent, either. Wolves smell things better than your species does, not to mention that we keep our dance floors well lit. It really is just lots of waltzing."

Stiles groans a little. "Maybe I'll just…invite you to more of these instead. You can bring your friends next time."

Derek hums, but they stop talking after that. It's weird that Stiles allows the silence to be a comfortable one; he usually ends up talking non-stop about stupid things and then embarrasses himself (not that he hasn't already done that a few times around Derek).

When they get to the road after a trip much more pleasant than the first (pointing things out was fun but Stiles was still bored), realizes that they're still holding hands.

"Gods, sorry," he says with a laugh as he lets go. "I've been holding your hand all night like you're watch dog or something." He frowns. "I mean, not that, a—"

Derek covers Stiles' mouth with his hand. "I still don't know why you have friends."

Stiles bats it away with a laugh. "Me neither. I'll see you in two days, yeah?"

Derek purses his lips the tiniest bit. "How will I keep up my tan with a day break, though?"

Stiles snorts. "You're such a warm blooded..." He trails off with frowns. "Wait, wait, did you just—"

Derek covers his mouth again. "No, I changed my mind, you're annoying."

Stiles rolls his eyes and bats the hand away again. "You better be there tomorrow, you…you…"

"Running out of insults?"

Stiles unfurls his wings as he glares. "Cockwad fits you quite nicely."

Derek snorts. "It's a new one, to say the least."

Stiles turns his wings back from the dark green they still are. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

Derek nods. "And bring something to eat. You had me starving today."

Stiles rolls his eyes as he jumps up. "Whatever, sourwolf."

Derek smiles as Stiles disappears out of the trees.

**XxX**

_Day 10…_

Stiles wakes up very late the next day, and he's not surprised to see that Scott and Allison aren't on the floor. He doesn't even need to read the note on the cots that they're usually on to know that they're just down in Scott's room from after the party. They always are after the parties.

Stiles stretched out under his blankets before forcing himself to sit up, looking out of the window to gauge the time. He realizes right away that he's overslept, so he dresses as fast as he can before soaring out of his room and straight to the waterfall. It's only after he's dropping to land that he realizes he didn't bring any food. And then it's only after he actually _does_ land that he sees Derek stretched out on the rock, already out of shirt—and totally passed out. Stiles tries not to laugh. He never would have guessed that the werewolf snores.

"Rek'," he says, pushing lightly at his side with his boot. "Derek, wake up."

Stiles expected Derek to either wake up normally or morph into his beta form and roar a bit, but instead the wolf snaps his hand out to grip against Stiles' ankle, pull at it, and totally topple him down. It's almost more painful than Scott's tackle to the ground, but Stiles can handle it as well.

It gets a little weird, though, when Derek pulls Stiles against him and crams his face into his neck. "Jus' a dream, Isaac," he mutters. "Go back to bed."

Stiles laughs. "Almost, but not quite."

Derek wakes up all the way at that, shoving Stiles away. "Sorry," he mumbles, shoving both hands through his hair as he sits up.

Stiles flits a wrist. "It's cool. Scott used to do it to me all the time, except he called me Allison. Does Isaac wake up at night a lot?"

Derek gives a tight look and looks away. "I don't want to explain it."

Stiles spins around and drops his head into Derek's lap. "I know I said I wouldn't pry, but that look is very unhealthy. How long has it been since you've ever talked about the problems you have that keep you from laughing?"

Derek glares down at him. "Not long enough."

Stiles gives him a tiny little smile. "Tell me. You know I won't tell it to anyone else."

Derek huffs through his nose, looking up at the sky.

Stiles reaches up a hand to tug lightly at the front of his shirt. "Why does Isaac have trouble sleeping?"

Derek looks back down, face like stone, but eyes sad and broken. "He has nightmares."

"What about?"

"Small spaces."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "He's claustrophobic?"

Derek nods.

"Did anything specific cause it?"

Derek growls darkly. "That I really can't explain to you because it's not mine to tell, but let's just say that nobody has seen his father in a _very_ long time."

Stiles cringes a little. "I won't ask. But…there is one thing that I do want to pry about again."

Derek gives a little sigh. "You want to know what Boyd's connection with Cora is."

Stiles nods. "Yes."

Derek swallows tightly. "It happened when I was ten. Cora was nearly four, and Boyd is three season cycles older. Back in generations before us, we used to live in caves—not underground like the arachnids, but just in the sides of mountains. One day Cora, Boyd, and I—Erica and Isaac weren't friends with us yet—were exploring an old cave. It…collapsed on us." He pauses, looking up at the sky. "I was close enough to the surface that I was able to get out, but the other two were trapped. They apparently had enough space to crawl around, but they were too low to get anything to them or even dig them out without fear of making it collapse even more and killing them. All we could hear was their howls through the stones…" He swallows tightly, looking back down. "They were down there for two _months_, too deep to feel the light of the full moon. The arachnids wouldn't help us dig them out from below because it was before our treaty with them. They were down there for so long because that's how long it took for _us_ to dig them out from below. Boyd was just old enough and big enough that he managed to keep himself sane, but Cora was young and small and…" He stops, just staring straight ahead of him.

"She barely survived without the full moon, right?" Stiles asks. "Without it she's…like she is now. A little mad."

Derek nods, jaw set tight. "If she had been older and had been taught completely how to control herself under the full moon she would have been fine, like Boyd, but…" He shrugs a little. "It was season cycles ago. She doesn't remember it, so the rest of us try not to talk about it either. We don't want her to know the truth."

Stiles tugs at the front of his shirt again to make him look back down. "So was the death of your father, but that doesn't mean you have to keep it bottled up inside of yourself until you break."

Derek looks down at him with a look torn between curiosity and hatred.

"Don't give me that look," Stiles says, stretching a little as his head is still in Derek's lap. "You know it felt good to tell me. And, now that I understand it, I'll stop being so mean to her in my thoughts. It wasn't fair of me to be when I didn't know the whole story." He shrugs. "Now I'll have to meet Boyd, of course, and Isaac and Erica while we're at it, but we can do that another da—"

Stiles is just _this_ far away from finishing his sentence, but suddenly Derek is gripping to the front of his shirt and lifting him up. Their lips mash together unexpectedly, but even so, Stiles realizes that his eyes are drifting shut. He wasn't jealous _of_ Derek, he was jealous _for_ Derek. He is such an idiot.

Derek drops Stiles back into his lap when the kiss ends, breathing heavy.

Stiles pulls in his own steady breath and licks his lips. "How long has it been since we saw each other drenched in blood?"

Derek licks his lips as well. "Nine days?"

Stiles nods. "You should, ah…do that again."

Derek does, and this time Stiles manages to swing around until he's straddling the wolf instead of just using him as a pillow. When Derek pulls away next, Stiles is unable to stop himself from continuing to kiss along his jaw.

"I forgot to bring the scale shined clothes for you to take and wash," Derek says hoarsely, arching his neck the tiniest bit.

"That's fine," Stiles says around kisses, catching the hint and moving said kisses down along his neck. If the way Derek's grip on Stiles' arms has anything to say, the neck is definitely a favorite werewolf place. "I forgot to pick up the can last night."

"You can get it later."

"How much later?"

Derek hums from deep in his chest and moves to wrap an arm around Stiles' lower back. "As long as it takes."

Stiles can't help a shiver run through his body, and he darts his tongue out once before simply pressing it flat and dragging it along. Derek hums again, but this time it sounds a little bit more like a growl, and the next thing Stiles knows is that he's being pressed down against the rock and Derek is kneeling above him and kissing him _hard_.

"Wait," Stiles trousers against his mouth, pushing against his chest. "We should, ah, find somewhere a little softer."

Derek nods, their lips still close enough to brush. "I know how to get you into my room without being seen, if you want to go that far."

Stiles purses his lips. "I don't know if I do."

The wolf smirks a little. "I know you can fly fast, but can you do the same through the trees?"

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "You mean while I dodge trees and things?"

Derek nods.

Stiles grins. "Hell yes I can."

As Derek jumps up to stand, he grabs his shirt and also swings Stiles up with him, arm still around his back. "Want to see how fast a wolf can run?"

Stiles nods fervently, unfurling his wings and making them black. Red is going to stand out like a sore thumb.

Derek lets him go and takes a step away, and Stiles notices that he has a flush on his cheeks as he pulls his shirt over his head. "Stay behind me and close. Our woods aren't as nice as yours."

Stiles doesn't take the time to answer that before they're off, sprinting through the woods at Stiles' favorite speed: really damn fast. He doesn't feel bad for land walkers anymore, because the way that Derek is launching through the woods on all fours is at the same speed that Stiles is in the sky. The view's pretty great, too.

When Derek finally stops them, Stiles realizes that they're coming out in the back of the giant stone castle. He's been to Beacon Moon before, of course, but never from back here. Unlike Beacon Sky, there's no clearing back here.

"How are you with piping?" Derek asks, feeling a hand across the exterior of the castle. Stiles sees that his claws are out.

"What do you mean?" he asks, stepping up beside him.

Derek grins a little, and Stiles sees that his fangs are out as well. "We've got climbing to do."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "How _much_ climbing?"

The pipes Derek leads Stiles through are just wide enough for Derek to fit comfortable through, so Stiles fits fine as long as he keeps his wings away. Their pipes consist of even more stones, so there are easy handholds if claws are used, and Stiles tries really hard not think about what the pipes might be fore.

"It's just a rain pipe, by the way," Derek says just after telling Stiles that they're about halfway up. "We have a lot of places that flood easily, so these were put in a couple of generations ago."

Stiles sighs in relief. "You couldn't have told me before we got in here?"

Derek grins down at him. "I want to hear your heartbeat panic every now and again."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "You better be glad I have a nice view of your backside from down here."

Derek simply hums at that, and then they're back in silence as they continue their climb.

"Here we go," the wolf finally says, shoving at a few of the stones to his left. They give out easily, toppling out. Derek crawls up the tiniest bit higher before swinging out feet first, and when Stiles gets up to it he realizes with a little frown that it's starting to get thinner.

"Is this the roof?" Stiles asks, poking his head out. He sees that the rain pipe is connected to other half-pipes around the edges, but of course they're dry since it's the middle of summer.

Derek nods, holding a hand out for Stiles to take and get pulled out. "My room is the highest room in the entire castle," he says, leading him onto the other side of the roof. "Watch me, but don't come down until I tell you to."

Stiles frowns, leaning over the edge of the roof as Derek swings down. He's got both sets of claws out and is actually sliding down slowly because of them, and as Stiles looks lower he sees a tiny little balcony. He ducks inside when he gets to it, but then he's right back out, smiling up at Stiles and tell him to come down.

"Can I fly or should I just jump?" he asks.

"You can just jump," Derek says. "I didn't because I don't have wings in case I miss."

Stiles doesn't miss, and he grins at the wolf. "Your kingdom is so much darker compared to mine," he says, leaning against the balcony railing and looking out over the rest of the castle and the village beyond it. "Everything is ugly grey stones."

"We like the dark," Derek says, taking one of Stiles' hands and pulling him inside. "We're creatures of the moon, _and_ we have night vision."

Stiles nods, looking around the room. It's as dark as everything else, decorated in black and gold. There's a large bed, a couple of dressers, and a giant full-body mirror that stand out right away, but the rest of the room just sits quietly in the dark.

"We only use light during feasts and dances," Derek says, closing the balcony doors and putting the room in complete darkness. Stiles blinks so that he can turn his human eyes into his alpha ones and actually see in the dark. "I'll light some up now, though. I know how much you like flickering lights." He winks.

Stiles smiles, kicking off his boots as Derek gathers up the little cylinders of wax. He lets himself fall onto the bed as Derek lights them, and he practically sinks into it.

"This," he says, rolling over to press his face into it, "is the softest, most beautiful thing that I've ever had the pleasure of touching."

Stiles feels the bed dip a little behind him, and then the wolf is crawling over him, rubbing his nose lightly against the back of his neck. "Reminds me of something else I know."

Stiles feels a blush creep across his cheeks, and he quick laughs to cover it up. "You're a lot nicer when you're not glaring at me," he says, looking back at him over his shoulder.

Derek hums, pressing their lips together as his body arches down against Stiles'. He rolls over beneath him so that it's an easier kiss, and his hands tug at the front of his shirt to pull them even closer against each other. Derek's hips rock slowly against him and Stiles grinds back, breath coming heavier the harder that Derek presses.

Derek eventually pulls away for a breath, Stiles continuing to kiss along his neck again. "I never thought I would truly enjoy the smell of a dragon," the wolf says, voice heavier than usual. It pools deep in Stiles' belly, and he can feel the beta scales around his navel beginning to prickle over his skin at the arousal.

Stiles remembers what Derek said about wolves having a stronger sense of smell than dragons, and he pulls away from his neck long enough to ask what he smells like.

Derek arches his neck a little more, voice straining to stay normal as Stiles picks a spot to suck on. "Every dragon has a similar smell because of you blood and scales. It's earthy even though you mostly live in the sky, kind of like mud. But yours is…different than mud. It's like cinnamon and limestone."

Stiles can't help but snort, dropping his head onto the pillow beneath him. "If I had known you were turned on my limestone, _your majesty_, I would have worn different perfume."

Derek rolls his eyes, knowing that Stiles is being the sarcastic little shit he loves to be. "My crib and beds as a child were made of limestone. It reminds me of home."

Stiles blushes again. "Does that mean you feel safe around me?"

Derek glances at Stiles' hand on his chest. "If those claws don't pull out any blood, then yes."

Stiles gives a guilty chuckle and retracts the claws. "Sorry."

Derek holds own of his own hand up to show off the claws on them. "It's okay, mine came out too."

Stiles pulls him back down at that, kissing him again. He lets his hands trail down until they're able to pull up at his shirt, their kiss stopping just long enough to pull it over his head. "You should have just kept it off," he breathes around a kiss.

Instead of answering, Derek pushes his tongue in, lapping it across the roof of his mouth. Stiles can't help the moan that escapes, and he tugs at the front of Derek's trousers to pull them harder against each other. The wolf pulls away, though, holding himself up by his knees while he pulls Stiles' shirt over his head. Stiles expects him to come back down for another kiss after that, but he just moves his hands straight to his trousers to undo their threads before pulling them down. Stiles hisses a little at the cold air against his skin, but then Derek pulls the blankets out from under them to actually make them useful. Stiles moans as Derek's hands wrap around what they can of his sides, leaning down to lick over a nipple before biting and sucking at it.

"You are still severely overdressed," Stiles manages to get out when the wolf pulls away.

Derek grins at him before leaning away to pull his own trousers off, his boots already on the floor from before he even got onto the bed.

Instead of letting Derek crawl back over him, Stiles leans forward to push him backwards, resting his hands on his chest as he grinds down against him and bends to suck at another spot on his neck. The wolf lets out a moan that pools into Stiles' belly again, and he feels multiple of his beta features coming out as once: his claws again, his eyes, and blotches of scales over his back and some around his left eye.

Derek's own clawed hands reach up to holding onto his sides again, but they don't stay long before one of them moves to hold against his backside and the other even lower to wrap around the back of a thigh.

"I want you," Stiles says against Derek's neck. It's so thick that he barely even recognizes it.

Derek hums so deeply in his chest that it is definitely a growl, and he pushes at Stiles to roll them over again. Instead of staying like that, though, he rolls Stiles once more so that he's on his hands and knees. The wolf gives him no time at all to prepare for the tongue that presses against him, and he moans hard into the pillow beneath him when it pushes inside. Derek's claws prick against his legs as he works him, but Stiles can't bring himself to care even a little bit.

Stiles almost whines when Derek pulls away, but he's glad he doesn't, because almost immediately the tongue is replaced with two of Derek's fingers at once. Stiles bites onto his bottom lip to keep from crying out too loud, and he realizes that his fangs are out when he tastes blood. Derek bends over him when he inserts a third finger, dipping his face into the crook of Stiles' neck and shoulder.

"Your entire back is covered in scales," he says, voice both husky and full of humor.

Stiles breathes a laugh, but it comes out as more of a breathy moan instead. "Just pray that my wings don't decide to join the party."

Derek hums, turning his face to press his lips to Stiles' neck. His tongue darts out and slicks a spot before sucking lightly, and Stiles tries really hard not to put holes in the bed. He's never been so turned on in his life.

When the wolf pulls his hand away, Stiles really does whimper, because he pulls away from Stiles' back as well. He was keeping him warm. He looks back to see Derek spitting into his hand before dropping it to his length, and Stiles realizes that he's biting against his lip again when he starts to taste more blood.

When Derek pushes up on his knees, he looks up at Stiles as he positions himself. His eyes are glowing red, and Stiles knows that his own yellow eyes are just as bright. As Derek pushes in, Stiles has to drop his head away, moaning into the pillow again. Derek starts to growl, but almost right away it rumbles into a moan that sends even more shivers through Stiles' body.

The first time that the wolf pushes all the way in is slow as he gets the feel of Stiles' body, but it doesn't last long, and Stiles is glad for that. He rocks back again him, back arched all the way, and he's never been gladder that dragons have naturally flexible backbones. Derek bends back over Stiles' back as he slides in and out of him, and Stiles hums happily at the warmth. He drops his face back into the crook of his neck as well, breathing heavy and moaning right into Stiles' ear.

Stiles lied earlier. _This_ is the most turned on he's ever been in his life.

One of Derek's hands reach over to find one of Stiles', holding onto the back of his hand so that their claws are weaved in beside each other. His other arm wraps around his waist, and Stiles moans hard when its hand wraps around his cock.

Derek pumps him in time to his thrusts, but it doesn't take long for both of them to completely lose the rhythm as their pleasure builds. Stiles comes first, coming over Derek's hand in a flourish, but the wolf follows moments later, curling tighter around Stiles' body in his release.

They roll to the side before collapsing, breathing heavy. Derek pulls out a moment later, his arm still wrapped around Stiles' waist. He rolls Stiles over so that they're facing each other, and the wolf kisses him softly. Stiles kisses him back, reaching his arms up to wrap his arms around his neck.

"I'm about to pass out," he says when they pull away to breathe.

"Good," Derek says, pushing a leg between Stiles' to tangle them together. "Stay."

Stiles nods, dropping his head to where Derek's other arm is stretched out just below the pillow. "What about the candles?"

"They'll go out," Derek whispers. "Your scales are gone."

"Your eyes are green again," Stiles whispers back.

Derek gives a warm, tired smile and dips down to nuzzle Stiles' cheek as he pulls the blankets tighter around them. "Goodnight, Stiles."

Stiles hums. "Sleep tight, sourwolf."


	4. Chapter 4

[Chapter summary: In which Derek's friends are nosy, love sucks, and Stiles and Derek are accidental matchmakers.]

**Chapter 4**

_Day 11…_

Stiles wakes up warm, but that's probably due to the fact that he's almost completely smothered against a body and underneath heavy blankets. He blinks his beta eyes (well, he says beta eyes because all dragons can do it, but alpha eyes aren't any different) open slowly, looking over the body beside him. It's Derek, obviously, snoring just as he was before. He's lying on his stomach with his arms up underneath his pillow, and Stiles is on his side beside him and with both arms wrapped like a vise around his stomach, and since he's low enough in that position he has both of his legs wrapped around the closest of Derek's.

He's hit with a strange remembrance of what it was like with Heather, but not because of the position. Heather wasn't much for cuddling, after sex or even just in general, so she and he were switched in that. Stiles finds himself smiling, because if Stiles has learned anything from the things he's heard about Isaac, Derek is definitely one for cuddling.

"Move _over_, Boyd," a voice hisses.

Stiles freezes completely. That wasn't Derek's voice. And they were talking to either Derek _or_ Stiles, which means it's not just Boyd in here, it's whoever's talking to him.

"I can't!" a deep voice grumbles at whoever hisses. "Derek and Isaac are taking up the entire _bed_."

"I am not," a third voice asks, quieter than all of the others.

Derek stirs at that, a low growl in his chest. "Go back to bed," he snaps, still tired.

Stiles whimpers a little.

All four other bodies in the room sit up simultaneously, staring down at him with red and yellow eyes.

"He's awake!" the girl (who's obviously Erica since she's the only female in the room) says brightly.

Stiles shakes his head and tries to bury himself under what part of Derek is still on the bed now that he's sitting up. "No I'm not," he says, pulling the blankets over his head.

"He's so cute!" one of the males says, and the blankets are pulled down to reveal curly hair and wide, curious eyes that Stiles instantly brands as Isaac.

The third, who must be Boyd, is just blinking at him in his own, stoic curiosity.

Derek shoves Erica and Isaac away from Stiles before throwing the blanket up and wrapping it around Stiles' bare upper body. "How did you three get in here?" he snarls, shoving Stiles behind him so that his three friends can't see most of him. "I locked all of the doors with all three locks each."

Erica snorts. "Please, as if we don't know how to get into those."

"Actually, I _don't_ know how to get into most of them," Isaac says. "Seriously, half of them are deadbolts."

"I don't know either," Boyd says with a shrug. "Erica didn't let us look."

The blonde smirks. "A woman never reveals her secrets."

Isaac gives her an innocent frown. "What about when you showed me how you—"

She slams her mouth against him to shut him up, and they topple completely off of the bed.

Stiles finds himself smiling, and he leans over Derek's shoulder to whisper into his ear: "I find it odd that you get along so well with people who are nothing like you."

Erica snaps her head up, lipstick smudged. How it was perfect after sleeping, he doesn't' know. "I'm _plenty_ like our alpha," she says haughtily. "We both have a freckle on our—"

This time Isaac reaches up to pull her down and shut her up.

Boyd grins down at them, but Stiles can't tell if he's debating whether or not to jump down too or is just glad that he's got them at all.

Derek sighs, twisting his back to look at Stiles. "I didn't know they would come in. I'm sorry."

Stiles smiles warmly, resting his chin on the wolf's shoulder. "I like them."

"I like you toooo!" Erica says from the floor.

Boyd's mouth widens in a smile, but his eyes don't crinkle right. "You smell terrible and with a mix of Derek."

Stiles decides to take that as a compliment, but Derek just groans. "All of you. Out."

"No way," Erica says, standing up completely, fixing her hair as she moves to sit back on the bed. "We have a _dragon_ to meet."

Stiles ducks down at that, not even embarrassed to admit that he is totally cowering. "No thanks!" he squeaks, wrapping his arms around Derek's waist. "I'm still asleep."

Boyd peeks around Derek with a little grin. "_You're_ Stiles?"

Stiles perks up at that, hands moving to Derek's shoulders. "He knows my name." He leans over Derek's shoulder to get to his ear again. "Why does the scary werewolf know my name?"

Derek sighs, dropping his head down and rubbing one of his temples. "You do realize that I can have all three of you beheaded, right?"

Isaac hums from deep in his chest as he crawls back onto the bed. "You'd never do that," he says, lifting Derek's head up to grin at him. "You love us, remember?" He leans forward and blows a raspberry on his forehead.

Stiles knows from Derek that this is just how Isaac is—how lack-of-personal-space he likes to be—but it still makes him frown a little. He's not going to stop it, though. It's not his place.

Boyd makes eye contact with Stiles for a split second. "Come here, Isaac," he says, pulling at one of his legs. "Don't upset the dragon or he'll burn you."

Isaac starts to pout, but then he makes eye contact with Stiles as well. "Sorry," he says guiltily.

Stiles wrinkles his nose up. "How do you—"

"Your heartbeat," Erica says, sprawled out beside him and Derek. "Our sense of hearing and smell is much better than yours."

Stiles nods. "So I see."

Derek twists back to around to face him again, jaw tight and eyes hard. "Are you okay with this?"

For the first split second Stiles gets that he means his friends knowing what happened before he and Derek fell asleep, but a second after that he sees the hidden softness in his eyes and knows that it's a deeper question than that. _Are you okay with this?_ With them. With everything.

So Stiles smiles and kisses the wolf's cheek. "Of course I'm okay with it," he says softly. "I wouldn't have climbed up a rain pipe if I wasn't."

Derek smiles at that, but then Isaac has to go and ruin it by cooing at them. Boyd shuts him up, though, with a kiss. Obviously this is something that they're used to.

"So," Erica says, sitting up. "Come out from behind your boyfriend and tell us something that Derek hasn't already told us about you."

Stiles gives Derek a little smirk as he does come out from behind him, both of them still wrapped in the blanket since they're naked. "I'd be mad if I hadn't already told Scott the basics."

Erica giggles. "The _basics_," she scoffs. "We've been talking about you for _season cycles_, Prince Stilinski."

Stiles frowns at that, but he frowns even deeper when he sees Derek his head to hide a blush. "Oh my gods," Stiles says, eyes widening. "How long have you had a crush on me?"

Derek ducks further, and now Isaac is back, flopping in front of them. "Only three season cycles."

"Ah," Stiles says with a nod. "When I hit puberty." He looks over at Boyd. "What's he told you about me?"

Boyd gives a shrug. "Not much until the last week except what you look like. That time you were late to Cora's birthday feast last season cycle, and when you fell out of your throne when his family showed up a little early, and more recently a lot of things about wings."

Stiles nods. "I have talked about wings rather a lot."

Derek looks up then, the blush gone. "I'm beheading all of you."

Isaac scoffs. "Nonsense."

Stiles smiles. "I won't let you."

Derek gives him a little glare, but there's no real threat behind it. "Traitor."

"Sleeping with you? Definitely."

He doesn't know how long they all end up sitting there, just asking him question after pointless question, but eventually Stiles realizes that he has no idea what time it is and a grand total of _zero_ people from his kingdom actually know where he is.

"Uh-oh," he says, swinging off of the bed with one of the sheets wrapped around him. "What time is it? Where does the sun set from here?"

Derek follows him with the blanket wrapped around him, swinging open the balcony doors before pointing, but it's useless since the sun is already half-set behind things.

"Aw hell," he says, moving back inside to find his clothes. "I need to go. I needed to go _hours_ ago. Allison is going to be worried sick."

"Who's Allison?" Isaac asks as he holds up Stiles' trousers.

"My personal servant," he says, sitting down on the bed so the sheet doesn't fall when he pulls his shirt over his head. "She's more like a helpful friend, though."

"Kind of like Ethan is for Derek?" Boyd asks.

"I have no idea who that is, but I'm sure it's a yes." He glares at Erica until she turns around so he can put on his trousers.

"Don't worry," Boyd says. "She doesn't want you."

"And neither do we," Isaac adds. "Although you're definitely one that I'd—"

Erica smacks the back of his head.

When Stiles has pulled on his boots, Derek gives his three friends very dark looks before pulling Stiles out onto the balcony and closing the doors behind them. _He's_ still wrapped in a blanket.

"Can you get back onto the roof without flying?" he asks.

Stiles looks up and nods.

"Good. Once you've done that, go to the other side and drop down as far as you can without your wings. Do _not_ go into the woods without me. I'll meet you down there in just a moment, okay?"

Stiles nods. "Okay."

Even though they're going to see each other again, Stiles pushes up to kiss him anyway. Derek kisses him back hard, pulling one arm out of his blanket robe to hold onto the back of his neck.

"Wait for me," he whispers again.

Stiles nods, and as soon as Derek is back in his room he unsheathes his claws and begins to climb. It's easier than he imaged, and it's even more fun to "sky dive" off of the very top of the castle before pushing his wings out to pull up and land on his feet. He barely waits at all before Derek is there, now dressed and walking out of a completely different passage than the pipe they took yesterday.

"Run again?" Derek asks.

Stiles nods. "Take me to the road."

Once again, Stiles gets a brilliant view on their journey.

When at the road, Derek drags Stiles just off of it and behind a tree before kissing him. It's slow and warm and soft and exactly the kind of kiss that you give somebody after you've already had sex with them.

"We're going to do this again, right?" Stiles whispers against his lips. "Because I really like you. Maybe not for as long, but in my defense, the kind of person who doesn't smile or talk to me is not exactly my type."

Derek breathes a laugh. "It's a good defense, and yes, we'll do it again."

Stiles grins. "Do I still smell like cinnamon and limestone?"

Derek kisses him again. "Always."

**XxX**

_2 Days Later  
Day 13…_

It was literally horrible to get around Allison's prying when he flew up to his room after leaving Derek, so he had to break down and tell her everything. Scott was there as well, but only part of it was news to him.

"I didn't know you _like_-liked the guy!" Scott had said loudly. "I thought you were just friends!"

Allison had rolled her eyes at him. "Meeting him to sunbathe at his waterfall probably means they're a little more than friends, Scott. He's never taken either of us there except the one time he showed it to us so we would know where to look for us if he was missing something important."

Scott had frowned very deeply at that, and so had Stiles. He hadn't even realized he was doing it.

And then, the next day, Scott had to go and mention it in front of Danny, Lydia, _and_ Jackson after his shock that Stiles was with a guy _and_ that he was a bottom, so now all of his friends know. Stiles is glad that they're the only friends they have and therefore don't have anyone _else_ to tell.

Stiles is seeing Derek later that day, and they just sat around under the sun until Stiles couldn't take it anymore and kissed him. They're together again today, currently sprawled across Stiles' bed, Derek on his back and Stiles half on top of him. The doors are long locked, plus Stiles telling Scott and Allison that they probably didn't want to try and break in unless they wanted to see their best friend/best friend's boyfriend taking it from behind.

They didn't protest.

"I want you to come tomorrow," Stiles says, looking at Derek from where his head is resting on his chest. "Erica, Isaac, and Boyd, too. Even the twins, if you want."

Derek hums, his chest vibrating slightly. "You really think it's wise? You can't cover _all_ of us with scale shine." (They washed his clothes early today.)

Stiles shakes his head. "Forget the disguises. Just come as you are. The festival is an all day event, and then there's another party after it gets dark. Erica would like it."

Derek tilts his head a little to the side, and one of his hands begins rubbing absentmindedly over his back. "Yeah, alright."

Stiles grins. "Really?"

The wolf nods. "It'll be fun. I'll bring the twins, too. They, uh…Isaac told them. Anyway, they don't care and they never get out of the castle anyway. Laura gets sick of Aiden all the time."

Stiles grins brighter. "Good. But, I mean, we should probably…" He waves a hand over them. "Keep this part of our relationship under wings."

Derek nods, his hand moving to rub over one of Stiles' shoulder blades. "That's probably a good idea. Does anyone besides Scott and Allison know about us in your kingdom?"

Stiles nods. "Danny, Lydia, and Jackson know now as well. Scott's an idiot sometimes."

Derek nods. "It doesn't surprise me that your friends are similar to you."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "So I'll meet the six of you at the road tomorrow, okay? Bright and early, too."

Derek starts to nod, but then purses his lips. "Can I, ah… Can I bring Cora, too?"

Stiles gives a good natured eye roll. "Of course you can. This"—he gestures to them again—"is going to get out further than just friends eventually, and once that happens I'll be spending a lot of time with your siblings. I might as well get used to them now."

Derek smiles. "Thank you."

Stiles grins and presses a kiss to his chest. "Anything for you, sourwolf."

**XxX**

_Day 14…_

The best thing about the kingdom of Beacon Sky is that nobody really gives a damn about formalities. Stiles is on a first name basis with half the kingdom and nobody ever calls him "prince". He loves it. He loves standing up on random rooftops and screaming something about how he's of age today and everybody whistling cat-calls at him.

Derek and his friends, on the other hand, look a little traumatized in this kingdom while they're used to their mostly-docile world of waltzing.

"Oh, come on," Stiles says. "You guys are fine."

Isaac glares from their huddle of six (Cora is currently following Scott and Allison around somewhere, probably having the time of her life). "We are not _fine_."

"You're right," Danny says, popping up beside smiles. "You're _damn_ fine." He winks at Ethan, who very obviously swoons a little.

"There are literally a hundred things you could all be doing right now," Stiles says, "and instead you're drawing attention to yourself by falling me around like little lost werewolf puppies. How many people actually _care_ that you're here? Zero, but you're making a big deal about it, so they're avoiding you."

Danny nods. "I think we should force them to split up," he says to Stiles. "Lydia and Jackson can take him"—he points to Aiden—"and the blonde. You take Derek for some boring secret relationship public time, we'll find Scott and Allison for the one with curly hair and his tall, scary friend, and I'll take _him_." He points at Ethan, who instantly pushes away from his older twin brother and steps in front of him.

"Ethan," he says softly.

Danny grins. "Danny. Hi."

Stiles frowns at them as they walk away. Is it really that easy to flirt with people?

Isaac is pouting. "But I don't want to leave Erica."

Erica kisses his cheek. "You'll be fine. Boyd will be with you."

"But I also don't want to leave Der—"

"Too bad," Stiles says, wiggling a finger at him. "He's _my_ boyfriend, no matter how many raspberries you give him in his sleep. Seriously, you're going to give him a heart attack."

Erica wraps her arms around her curly haired boy. "Don't listen to the big bad dragon, honey. He's just jealous that Derek doesn't threaten him like he does you."

Isaac smiles and kisses her.

Aiden and Boyd exchange eye rolls.

It doesn't take long to find Scott and Allison making yarn rainbows with Cora, and Isaac jumps right into it while Boyd just sits behind him and rests his head against his back. It's a little harder to find Lydia and Jackson, and they don't seem thrilled about babysitting at first, but then Aiden and Erica both flash dazzling smiles and it's fine. Stiles always did think their relationship was a little off. Shame that Erica is taken.

"_Finally_," Stiles says, rolling his eyes as he and Derek walk away from friends old and new. "You are all pathetic."

"You'd be the exact same in Beacon Moon and you know it," Derek says, rolling his eyes.

Stiles grins, forcing himself not to reach out and hold his hand. "Come with me."

Derek follows him until they're away from the birthday festival (which is not an easy thing to do) and tucked into the corners of some old buildings, Stiles grinning. Derek wipes it away, though, when he presses both hands beside Stiles' head and one of his knees between his legs.

"The best part about doing this in my kingdom," Stiles says as he hitches a leg up against one of Derek's hips, "is that the dragons won't be able to find us by smell."

Derek hums, leaning closer. "Maybe not the _best_ part."

Stiles loves the way that Derek kisses when they have as long as they want to do it. Always slow at first, pushing open Stiles' mouth with his own. His tongue is hot and draws Stiles' out and into his own mouth before closing his lips and sucking in on it until Stiles moans and he pulls his lips away until Stiles slips free. And then it gets harder, pushing Stiles against something (which has already been done) and delving his tongue in to reach every inch of Stiles' mouth until he has to pull away so his little dragon can breathe. This little dragon hates breathing.

When Derek pulls away from the kisses, his eyes are dark and hooded and his lips are red and swollen. "Happy birthday," he whispers.

Stiles kisses him much harder this time, reaching his arms up to throw them around Derek's neck and push his hands into his hair. Derek hums deep in his chest as he pushes Stiles harder against the wall, and a hand drops down to wrap Stiles' other leg around his waist as well.

"Wow," Stiles whispers between kisses. "I want you. Bad."

Derek nips at his bottom lip before moving his mouth down his jaw and to his neck, sucking hard. Stiles hasn't gotten any love-marks yet, but this is definitely going to draw one out.

"You're so beautiful," Derek says as Stiles drops his head to expose his neck more. "Gods, how did I survive?"

Stiles feels a blush creep across his neck, but that also may be due to the fact that Derek's hand is currently slipping between his spread legs and palming him through his thin trousers.

Stiles moans hard, glad he found a spot so secluded. They're on the edge of the village _and_ hiding between and behind things. What a wonderful idea. "Derek, I—" He has to cut off when the wolf moves back to kissing him on the mouth, but it doesn't stop him from moaning.

"Derek," he finally manages to get out gain, dropping one of his hands from the wolf's hair to still the hand between his legs. "Careful or I'll have to go all the way up and change."

At that, Derek drops him down completely. Stiles frowns, but his mouth dries out when the wolf drops to his knees.

"It's not _that_ secluded," he chokes out as Derek's fingers move swiftly through the ties of his trousers.

"I'm listening," he says, tugging the trousers down to let Stiles' erection free. "I'll know if someone is coming. Relax."

Stiles does the moment that one of Derek's hands wraps around the base of his length, deciding to put every ounce of trust in the wolf. It's not like he would want to be caught giving the dragon prince a "birthday present" either.

Stiles chokes a little when Derek opens his hand long enough to flatten his tongue a lick up his entire length—_twice_—before circling the head with his lips. Stiles knows he's felt more sensations there before, but right now he can't think of any. They've only done this once before, and their positions had been switched around. Derek has the most adorable, whimpering moan…

Stiles is the one doing it now, watching his cock disappear into Derek's mouth when he moves his hand again to suck all the way down to the hilt; watching Derek pull away and leaves trails of saliva in his wake. Stiles is getting very close very fast, and he's about to warn the wolf, but then he _pulls away_ and Stiles is just left whimpering. Only for a second, though, because Derek—the werewolf prince, Stiles' _amazing_ boyfriend—is leaning up to lightly suck one of his balls into his mouth. Stiles is left gasping a little at the new sensation, and he lets a hand drop down to push into Derek's hair.

"Oh gods," he gasps when Derek moves to the other. "Gods, Derek, please, I need—"

Almost the moment that Derek pulls away and slides his mouth down Stiles' cock again he's coming, crying out as softly as he can (which is really not that soft) as Derek sucks him dry.

"Wow," he whispers when Derek pulls away. "That was…wow."

Derek grins as he puts Stiles' trousers back on, and Stiles shivers a little as he presses a trail of kisses up his shirt. "It _is_ your birthday."

Stiles breathes a laugh and wraps his arms around his neck. "Usually I like whatever my parents get me, but this season cycle I doubt it's going to be at the top of my list."

Derek smirks and kisses the tip of his nose and Stiles tucks himself away. "Good. I worked hard on it. I made it all by myself."

"Oh? I was under the impression that you bought it."

Derek snorts a little, but as Stiles laughs at his own joke, he realizes that Derek is laughing with him. Wide mouth with perfect teeth and crinkled eyes and it suddenly doesn't matter that they've only really known each other for 2 weeks, Stiles wants to throw himself off of his castle because, yeah, he's falling in love.

Derek must notice the change in his heartbeat, because his laughter dies away to a concerned look. "Are you okay?"

Stiles nods. "Kiss me."

Derek hesitates a moment before doing so, making it a good one, nice and soft.

Stiles wants to fall in love with Derek. It'd be perfect. But…he can't, and Derek can't ever fall in love either. They have obligations to completely different kingdoms, close as those kingdoms are. Stiles is first in line for the throne of Beacon Sky and maybe Derek is second in line for Beacon Moon but _still_ because what if something happens to Laura? Cora can't rule, she's half mad. He and Derek can't ever get married because males can't get pregnant so how would Stiles ever produce an heir? He'd have to sleep with someone else just for it and then he'd feel like he was betraying Derek and—

Derek pulls away, face dark. "What's _wrong_, Stiles? Your heart is beating so fast that I can feel it."

Stiles pulls in a deep breath and decides he probably shouldn't perfect his skill for lying at a time like this. "I'm falling in love with you," he chokes out.

Stiles expected the wolf to be offended that that's such a disheartening feeling to Stiles, but instead he kisses him, long and hard.

"I know," he whispers when he finally pulls away. "Me too. I'm sorry."

Stiles' heart skips a beat at that. They're falling in love and they can't do anything about it. But…they're falling in love, and maybe that makes it okay. "Apology accepted," he whispers.

And Derek smiles.

**XxX**

_Day 15 (the middle of the night)…_

When Stiles finally gets himself away from the drums up on stage during the party, he grins out at everyone around him. Apparently Aiden is a harp player, so he took over for Danny at the harp so that he could dance with his twin all night. Lydia is instead playing the violin so Allison and Scott can dance in the crowd as well, Jackson taking up the drums and playing far worse than Stiles (it's nice to know that he can suck at things too). Erica is currently dancing between Isaac and Boyd, Cora is jumping around with the same four-person group that Derek was with last time, and Derek himself is _way_ on the other side of the clearing with the food.

Stiles hops down and goes around the crowd to get to him, bumping his hip to push him aside and eat the last cupcake. "I really want to dance with you," he says around a mouthful of frosting, "but I know it's not a good idea."

Derek smiles as he reaches a hand out and wipes a cake crumb away. "As if staying to talk to each other while soaked in blood was a good idea anyway. But…" He shoves his hand behind his back. "No. It's not."

Stiles nods. "So…three season cycles ago, huh?" Stiles is surprised that he hasn't gotten around to this question sooner, but better late than never.

Derek ducks his head a little as he reaches for a completely different place of cupcakes that Stiles didn't see. "It wasn't just that you grew up," he says softly, close enough to Stiles that he can hear it. "You tripped."

Stiles shudders and looks away. He remembers that. He thought nobody saw that. Then again, he thought nobody had seen a lot of things, but apparently Derek is a little more observant than most. "You decided to crush on me because I'm clumsy sometimes?"

Derek gives that small, warm, fond smile that Stiles first saw when he was talking about his three best friends. "It was the most ungraceful thing I had ever seen, and then you made it even worse by slipping twice more while trying to scramble up and then hitting your head on a suit of dragon armor when you finally _did_ get up. I've grown up graceful and I've only ever seen you and your parents act as such, so it was cute to see such ungraceful qualities followed by whispered words to express your pain and annoyance."

"_Cute_," Stiles repeats, rolling his eyes. "Thanks. I'm sure it helped that my shoulders looked broader than usual in the dumb jacket that Allison put me in, too."

Derek grins. "A little, yeah."

Stiles nods. "So are you, I mean…just guys or what? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'm just girls and you."

Derek snorts a little. "I'm both. Most werewolves are. I've only officially dated two other women, though."

Stiles tilts his head a little. "Do I know them?"

Derek shakes his head. "Paige was executed and Jennifer is one of my mother's personal servants."

Stiles chokes a little. "Executed? For what?"

"Oh, nothing must, just a little jewel theft."

Derek gives Stiles four seconds of panic before snorting.

"I'm kidding, she's still alive."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "You suck."

"If you mean that by earlier today, then yes I do."

Stiles smiles, but then he lets out an aggravated sigh. "I _really_ want to dance with you." He grabs his hand. "Come with me."

Derek doesn't protest as Stiles drags him into the woods, far enough away that they can't be seen but close enough that they can still hear the music clearly.

Stiles grins back at the wolf when he turns him around to face away. "I find it funny that you know exactly what you're doing when you've never done this before me."

Derek leans over his shoulder with a little smirk. "I may or may not have seen this coming and asked Heather if she could teach me."

Stiles gapes at him. "She was okay with it even after you rejected her last time?"

"I promise to introduce her to Aiden—or, in her eyes, 'the hottie filling in for Danny on the harp'."

"You think he'll go with it even when she's pregnant?"

"I'm not sure, but I'll warn him. I just said I'd introduce them, not guarantee their eternal love."

Stiles hums, turning in Derek's arms to kiss his neck. "How nice of you."

Derek hums deeper, sounding more like a growl as he sets his hands on Stiles' hips. "I'm just that kind of wolf."

Stiles honestly didn't mean for it to happen. All he wanted was to dance with his boyfriend. But instead he ends up shoving the wolf up against a tree and jacking them off with the same hand and without their trousers even getting down to their knees. Stiles loves the way that Derek sounds so fragile when he moans, and the way his hands scramble for a hold against Stiles' shoulders.

"_Now_ who's beautiful?" Stiles rasps out as they grab down some tree leaves for napkins. They're obviously not ideal, but they're certainly better than nothing.

Derek is still breathing heavy, but he does manage words: "Both of us."

Stiles breathes a laugh. "Conceited bastard. But that's okay, because I have come twice today and I am a very happy birthday dragon—_forget_ the stuff everybody else got me."

Derek cringes a little. "I think you're dad could tell."

Stiles snorts. "I know my dad a lot better than you do, and trust me, he couldn't tell. He and all the others were just surprised that you were actually talking, is all."

Derek sighs as they put themselves back into their trousers. "It's only because I didn't know any of you. You know that I open up to people that I know."

"Thank the gods. It's good for my kingdom to see the real you anyway. The real sides of your friends, on the other hand…"

Derek groans a little. "You _know_ Isaac didn't mean to do that."

"He tumbled down the stairs and skidded to a halt in front of my _mother_—the _queen_. She may have laughed, but it still terrified her."

Stiles sighs. "He won't do it again. He's not usually clumsy. Wolves aren't usually clumsy in the first place."

"In his defense, Erica did push him."

"_Now_ you're defending him."

"Shh and kiss me."

The sun is going to be up within the hour by the time they get back to the clearing, so Stiles makes Danny get back on the harp so Derek can introduce Aiden to Heather. He doesn't seem to care about the pregnancy, but Stiles gives him a very subtle "if you fuck her and then leave when she finds out for herself I can guarantee that you'll never step foot in my kingdom again" before going back up on stage to sing once with Scott and Lydia.

By the time the sun is actually up and the candles are burnt out, Stiles never wants to go to another party again. All of the werewolves are huddled up and saying goodbye to their new dragon friends, and Stiles can't help but lean up and whisper into Derek's ear:

"I won't even _have_ to be on the throne to do away with all these formalities."

Derek smiles down at him. "Thank the gods."

"We don't have to go over for my birthday feast until later, right?"

Derek snorts. "I'll make sure of it. We're all going to be sleeping for the next twelve hours, so we can't exactly attend a meal."

Stiles nods. "Good, but I'll probably sleep four fourteen."

"Are we invited?" Scott asks, dropping himself tiredly over Stiles' shoulders.

Stiles pushes him off, and Allison barely catches him before he just collapses. No sex for them tonight!—er, this morning. "No, it's just us. One step at a time."

"Shame," Danny says from where he and Ethan are just staring into each others eyes. It's kind of sickening, actually.

"Definitely a shame," Ethan says, pushing up to kiss him hard.

Stiles rolls his eyes. "And now we're matchmakers."

The werewolves run back to their own kingdom on their own, and the next person to drape themselves over Stiles is Heather. "Do you think he likes me?" she asks. "Because he's really hot and I really like him, too."

Stiles mashes his lips into a thin line. "Heather, I…I need to tell you something."

She pouts out her bottom lip. "He told you that he doesn't like me, didn't he?"

"Ethan said that he likes you," Danny says, patting her on the head before walking off.

She smiles brightly, but it fades. "If he really does like me, what do you have to tell me?"

Stiles sighs, pulling her over to the stage to sit down on it. "Who was the last person that you had sex with?"

She gives him an appalled look. "I don't care _if_ you're the prince, that is none of your business."

Stiles shakes his head. "No, listen. Werewolves have higher senses than we do, okay? They can hear the rise of heartbeats and, ah, smell things that we won't know about for another month or so."

She frowns. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

"Remember the night that you first saw Derek? And he obviously didn't want to dance with you so you walked away? Well…there was a reason that he didn't."

She gasps a little, and Stiles thinks that she gets it, but instead she lifts up and arm and sniffs herself. "I _do_ smell bad."

Stiles face-palms. "No, it's…it's worse than that."

She pales a little. "Worse than smelling bad?"

Stiles is almost dead positive that she's going to be putting her baby up for adoption. "Tell me who the last person you had sex with was, okay? I won't tell anyone, I promise. It's very important that you do, though."

She huffs, looking down at their feet waving an inch above the ground at the height of the stage. "It was Matt."

Stiles can't help the little choking noise he makes. "Oh my gods, I'm so sorry."

She punches his shoulder, and not soft. "Fuck you, your _majesty_." She hops down.

Stiles grabs her hand, though. "Derek told me that he could sense that you're pregnant, Heather."

His ex-girlfriend freezes, looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes. "Please tell me you're lying."

Stiles shakes his head. "That's why he didn't want to dance with you."

She instantly starts crying, and Stiles quick jumps down to wrap his arms around her. "I have good news too, though! Aiden knows, but he still kissed you before he left, right? That means that he doesn't care. Or, if he does, I'll punch him out. I'll get Matt for you in the meantime, by the way."

She groans, shoving him away. "You are _terrible_ at making people feel better."

Before Stiles can answer, Heather's best friend, Danielle (Stiles met her when she dunked his head underwater to sober him up after getting drunk out of his mind—pretty sure the same night that he kissed Danny, actually, but it's a little fuzzy), shows up to wrap her arms around her instead. "What did he _do_?" she asks darkly.

Heather shakes her head as she cries. "Not him, not him. I'm _pregnant_, Danielle! His wolf friends can smell it or something and they can smell it in _me_."

Danielle's eyes widen. "Matt?"

Heather cries harder as she nods. "He'll _never_ help me raise it! It was a one night stand!"

Danielle pats her soothingly on the back before looking at Stiles. "I'll take it from here. Thank you for telling her instead of just letting her find out."

Stiles nods, still a little annoyed with her about the whole dunking thing. "Yeah, of course."

When Stiles gets back to his room, Scott and Allison are both passed out on their cots on the floor. Stiles wants to stay up a little later to go find Matt and beat him up for not using protection (maybe passing on the alpha gene is only able to happen with consent, but not _children_), but he's honestly exhausted. That's another reason why he told Heather right now instead of waiting. She'll be too tired from celebrating at the festival all day and then dancing literally all night to stay awake and dwell on her current problem.

Stiles passes out without even taking his shoes off. He dreams of Derek, which is no surprise, but the wings towering out of his back and covered in shaggy black fur are certainly new. Stiles flies with him anyway, though, because everything in dreams makes sense, right? Even when Derek breathes fire as he howls up at the moon, everything is perfectly normal, and Stiles loves it.


	5. Chapter 5

[Chapter summary: In which traitors are revealed, Stiles really loves his friends, and maybe love doesn't suck so bad after all.]

**Chapter 5**

_Day 15…_

When Stiles finally wakes up, he's tired and groggy, and there's a tired and groggy Allison kneeling above him.

"My dad just came in and chewed me out for not being awake to wake you in time for a bath," she mutters, "so get up."

Stiles can't remember the last time he felt so disgusting after an all night party, but he knows a cold bath will make him feel much better. Times like these he's glad he's an alpha for his ice breath, not to mention Allison can freeze the tub from the bottom—though she's not as of now since she's picking out clothes.

Stiles feels much better after freezing to death in the water, and then he and Allison get him dressed as quickly as they can before she shoos him out of his bedroom so she can go back to sleep (Scott was out cold the entire time—even when Stiles tripped over him). They're riding horses to Stiles' birthday feast, which is usually what they do. Stiles would much rather just fly, but apparently it's not "polite". He'll have to change that policy as well.

Werewolf guards are the only things waiting for them when they arrive, and the ride into the kingdom is far from awkward. They've been here hundreds of times, after all.

"Oh, Stiles, _darling_!" Talia says brightly, pushing up from her throne with the elegance only a queen could pull off. "Happy birthday, child."

"Child?" Peter scoffs. "He's eighteen, sis. Show him some respect."

She shoots her little brother a dark look, but ignores him, turning back to smile at Stiles and his parents. "Come, come, the feast awaits."

Derek moves to stand beside Stiles on the way, face like the old stone but eyes shimmering with unshed smiles. Cora pops up on his other side, face close and eyes wide. "A season cycle older and a season cycle closer to death."

"And I'm still older than you!" he yells, grabbing her face and blowing a raspberry against her cheek.

She giggles maniacally and runs up to Laura, linking their arms together.

"She's cute when she's not creepy," Stiles says, grinning up at Derek. "Like the child that she was."

Derek's stone expression is gone, now the softest that Stiles has ever seen it. "If we were anywhere else," he whispers, "I would kiss you."

Stiles smirks, looking out ahead of him. "I know." He frowns, though, when he sees Peter staring intently at both of them from where he's walking beside Talia. "Your uncle is as annoying as usual, I see."

He knows that the wolf hears him, but it's confirmed when he stops walking so that he can hang back until he's beside Stiles in Cora's old place. "It's amazing how you look season cycles older than when I last saw you, Prince Stilinski," he says, sickly sweet.

Stiles gives his very best "I hate you but I'm not allowed to tell you, you sleazy creep" sort of smile. "Yes, I'm sure you missed me _dearly_ since Cora's birthday."

"Oh, no, not then," he says, tucking his hands behind his back. "Very recently, actually. Tell me, how lovely _is_ the view from Derek's balcony? He never lets me see for myself."

Both Stiles and Derek freeze in place, staring at him. But the werewolf gives an evil smirk as he continues to walk away from them. "Be prepared for a show tonight, boys. It's going to be…" He flits a wrist and turns away. "_Encaging_."

"Are we in trouble?" Stiles whispers.

"We are totally in trouble," Derek says back.

Dinner is just as awkward as it was for Cora thanks to Stiles and Derek just constantly making glaring eye contact with Peter, but the sleazy wolf just grins back at them, making polite conversation with the table. _Polite_ conversation? The others should have noticed something was wrong right away.

"I propose a toast," Peter says, standing once the cake has been cut and served. "To the youngest dragon of royal blood, on this wonderful coming of age celebration." He raises his wine glass. "All of us. The servants as well."

Talia gives him a dark look, but it's already been proposed, so of course she stands as well, giving the okay for the eight around the room to come and stand around the table with them. Stiles mouths a "hello" to the twins, who nod in return. It must be so boring in a setting that's always so…posh.

"Deucalion, if you please," Peter says, wiggling his wine glass at him.

Stiles swears that Peter's personal servant is blind the way that he moves, but he gets a pitcher of wine just fine, moving around to refill everyone's glasses. Talia starts to tell Deucalion not to pour any for Cora, but he assures her that it won't affect her the way that normal wine will. This is a strict toasting wine. Apparently that's a thing, but it smells good, so Stiles doesn't care.

"To Prince Stiles Stilinski!" Peter says brightly, glass up high. "From all fourteen of us!"

Stiles decides that, hey, it's his birthday, so he may as well chug it.

It's the worst decision that he ever makes, and the last things he hears are Peter's laughter and the dragging of a sword against the dark stone floor.

**XxX**

_Day 15…_

"Stiles…"

The voice is soft, drifting across the clouds that he's lying on. Derek moves to stand above him, those furry black wings hanging down so it doesn't block the blue of the sky.

"Stiles," he says again, voice harder.

Stiles frowns up at him, eyes trying to blink him into focus. "Hmm?"

This time he drops down to his knees and roars at him, and Stiles snaps into a sitting position, blinking away the clouds and the sky and the wings and even Derek altogether. Instead it's his mother sitting beside him, arms wrapping tight around him.

"We thought she lost you!" she says frantically. "Your heartbeat stopped and you weren't breathing!"

Stiles knows she went through something traumatizing if she's saying those things, but he stands up and out of her grip anyway, looking around with his beta eyes so he can actually see. They're in a cave a sorts, but there are metal bars crisscrossing completely around it, from the ceiling and down the walls and across the floor. There's a tiny hole of an opening in the middle of one wall, but the cage extends across it.

"What happened?" he asks, looking around to see who else is in the cave with him. Besides his mom and himself it's his dad (and no other dragons since they were in werewolf territory), Laura, Cora, the twins, two other female servant that Stiles doesn't know the names of, and even Erica, Boyd, and Isaac. Everyone except for Derek, Talia, Peter, Deucalion, and three other of the servants that Stiles never got around to learning the names of (a male even twice Derek's size, a dark haired female who he's never seen with shoes, and a dark skinned female who Stiles has noticed has a very close resemblance to Alan Deaton, a villager of Stiles' own kingdom). He growls, getting a pretty good idea before anybody actually says anything.

"It was the wine," a different dark skinned female servant says, sitting crisscrossed on the floor. Isaac is leaning against her back, looking over her shoulder to watch Stiles as well, while Erica's head is in his lap and Boyd is lying beside Erica with his arms wrapped around her waist, eyes closed, but Stiles can tell that he's not actually asleep. "Peter and his fellow traitors drugged us."

Stiles feels all of the blood drain out of his face. "Derek is a traitor?" he chokes out.

"No," Laura says from where she's leaning against the bars on one wall. "He's not, and neither is my mother. They were taken somewhere else." She drops the back of her head against the bars, her dark hair falling away from her shoulders. "Just Peter, some servants, and one of yours."

Stiles frowns. "What do you mean 'one of mine'?"

"Gerard," Patrick says, arms crossed from where he's standing in the middle of the cave. Claudia is still sitting on the floor from where Stiles had been lying down. "He and Peter have been planning this since before he even retired." (He retired six season cycles ago.)

Stiles vaguely remembers the dragging of a sword against stone. That's who it was. Gerard and one of his many swords. "How do we know that?"

"Peter is the kind of villain that tells you everything and then walks away to leave you to rot, apparently," Boyd says with an eye roll. "Gerard isn't, though, so he stopped him before he got too far."

"All that we know," Claudia whispers, "is that they're going to collapse the cave around us and leave us here to die, and also that they're planning on staring a war between our two kingdoms until they're both driven so far into the ground that they have no choice but to follow the only alpha left, being Peter, with Gerard at his side."

"What about Derek and Talia, though?" Stiles asks somewhat frantically.

Everyone exchanges shifty looks before Cora is the one to answer: "Public execution." It's in her usual "wow I sure love murder" voice, but Stiles knows her a little better now, and he can tell that it very much distresses her.

Stiles whimpers a little, backing up against the nearest cave/bar wall, almost stepping on Boyd's legs in the process. "Did he say when?"

"He told us after all of us woke up but you," Erica says softly. "That was about two hours ago, so they have less than two hours left. It's supposed to happen during the sunrise to signify that he's even more dead to them than he will be. Wolves and the sun don't really mix."

"He thought up the reason as to why they need to be executed and everything," Boyd says, eyes closed again. "Like we said, they've been planning it for _season cycles_. Gerard wouldn't let him tell us what it was, though."

"It probably doesn't matter anyway," Isaac says softly, dropping his head back to rest on the dark skinned servants shoulder (Stiles wonders what their connection is). "Whatever it is, it's going to make the entire kingdom hate them and scream for their blood to be shed."

"All those years of Derek threatening to behead us…" Erica says, voice cracking slightly and eyes beginning to water. "He made me promise that I wouldn't cry."

"He's not going to die!" Stiles hisses, looking around the room. "And neither is Queen Talia! There _has_ to be a way to get out of here…" He looks to his parents. "The servants and our friends will worry about us if we don't get home within the hour. They'll come looking for us."

"And then get locked away as well," Patrick says darkly. "They won't be suspicious enough to _sneak_ into the forest and look for us, and even if they are…"

Stiles' eyes widen, remembering how adamant Derek was about not letting Stiles go into the woods alone. "The forest of Beacon Moon is dangerous."

"_Very_ dangerous," Laura says, licking her lips. "We have traps everywhere, from swinging clubs with spikes to mines to trap doors that fell you onto stakes. The road is the only safe way through, and it's bound to be heavily guarded."

"So we're dead," Stiles says, looking towards the dark hole in the cave.

The other female servant, sitting beside the one Isaac is leaning against, suddenly lets out a growl from deep in her chest. "I should have _known_ Kali was going to do this," she says, eyes glowing yellow in anger.

"It's okay, Jennifer," Laura says, resting a hand on her shoulder. "You had no real way of knowing. They tricked us." She stands up, eyes glowing with livid red. "_All_ of us."

Stiles is glad that Laura is the next in line. Derek would hate the throne. He frowns. Wait. "_You're_ Jennifer?" he asks, eyes wide.

The servant raises her head to look at him. "You know me?"

"No, you, yes, I…" He trails off, flitting a wrist. "It's not important. I heard your name in conversation once."

"I didn't know Derek still talked about me."

Stiles sighs, crossing his arms and dropping to look at the bars on the floor. "Paige came up, too."

"Does he love you?"

Stiles snaps his head up to look at her (and try _really_ hard not to look at anyone else in the room, especially Laura and his parents), her eyes sad and no longer yellow. "Why would he love me?" he asks, forcing himself to look confused. "That's like asking me if I love Isaac. Super cute, but not my type—or, in this case, his."

She gives a sad smile and a hum, looking over at Isaac, whose eyes are as wide as usual. "You all have adorable heartbeats. How many of you know?"

Stiles sees Isaac squeeze the unnamed servants hand. "Braiden, please," he whispers.

Braiden hisses at Jennifer to shut up.

"What's going on?" Patrick asks, arms crossed darkly.

"Nothing," Jennifer says with a polite bow of her head. "Nothing at all."

Boyd hisses at her as well: "Just because he doesn't love you doesn't mean you get to—"

"Does he still have that freckle, Stiles?" she asks in a sickening tone. "Or did he try and cover it up again?"

Stiles knows he's blushing furiously. "No wonder he broke up with you," he snarls, looking away.

She chuckles. "He hasn't told you why he left me, did he? Someone…grew up."

Erica snarls at her, the roar echoing through the cave. "Shut. Up," she says breathlessly, her eyes yellow and claws extended and fangs sharp.

Stiles tries really hard not to snarl at anyone as they look around, confused and curious.

"Jennifer," Laura says steadily. "You are annoying me. I _order_ you to shut your _howling screamer_."

Jennifer looks taken aback and that, and yeah, Stiles is glad that she's next in line for the throne. "As you wish, your majesty."

Stiles accidentally makes eye contact with his mom. "What's going on?" she asks.

Stiles blushes again, and he paces over to the opening in the cave to stare into the darkness. Even with his night vision there isn't anything to see at all since they're deep in their cave, so he's left to focus on how much he hates Derek's ex-girlfriend right now.

"Stiles?" his dad questions.

"It's not important!" he grinds out, turning around. "We're trapped in a cave with bars and we're talking about Derek's _love life_? Who cares! How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?!"

"We've tried everything," Ethan says from where he's huddle with his twin and Cora, saving Stiles from having to explain anything to his parents or Laura. "Your father even used his alpha form, but…"

"It was useless," Aiden mutters. "The bars electrify all around if anyone tries to pull at them, so that was out almost right away since it hurt every last one of us at once. They also don't melt from fire breath or shatter if frozen enough with ice breath. We're completely trapped in here."

"Trapped!" Cora says loudly. "We're trapped we're trapped we're trapped!" She actually looks angry about it, too. Maybe she doesn't remember being trapped in a cave, but her hatred of them must be an underlying feeling.

"And that's why we're talking about Derek's old love life," Claudia says softly. "There's nothing else to talk about."

"Yes there is," Stiles says, turning back around. "What was in the wine to drug us? Why did my heart stop beating? Everything. Anything."

"It was poison," Braiden says. "Dull poison, from the arachnids. The reason that you almost died is because you drank the entire glass. You were supposed to pass out before you did."

Stiles latches onto the new subject like a lifeline: "You werewolves weren't able to smell that?"

"No," Boyd says with a shake of his head. "They masked it with real wine. It has a stronger scent."

Stiles snorts. "Death by poison alcohol. My blood clotted in my veins, but at least I was drunk!" He rests his head against the bars with a sigh. "This is stupid."

"Stiles, please," he mom says quietly.

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and reaches a hand to curl through the bars. "It's not important."

"Just tell them," Erica says. "You may as well, Stiles. We might die in here."

"We're not going to die!" Stiles yells, spinning around. But then he sees the look on his mothers face, and he sighs, leaning back against the bars and pushing a hand through his hair. "Whatever. Derek and I are—were—whatever—secretly dating."

Out of all the gasps in the room of the people who don't know (being only Stiles' parents and Laura since Jennifer obviously figured it out), Cora's is the loudest. His parents are just staring, eyes wide and confused and Stiles refuses to look any deeper because he _refuses_ to find the disappointment in them.

Except he doesn't hear it, either.

"I knew it!" Patrick says, dropping his crossed arms. "I _knew_ there was something suspicious about the way you were talking to each other."

Stiles frowns. Was Derek right? No way.

Claudia gives him a warm smile. "The only thing that bothers me about it is that you won't be able to produce an heir, but other than that, Derek is lovely."

Laura makes a disgusted sound. "Oh my gods," she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Peter is going to use that against him until the very moment he dies. The entire kingdom will just tack that on as another reason that he needs to die." She drops the hand and glares once at Stiles before looking down at the huddle of Braiden, Isaac, Erica, Boyd, and Jennifer, who all knew. "Didn't you _tell him_ that it's _forbidden_ for werewolves to be with that of another species?"

Stiles frowns. He didn't know that. He just assumed it was the same in Beacon Moon as it was in Beacon Sky…

"He knows," Ethan says, "but that didn't stop my brother and I either."

She gives them appalled looks. "You mean, when you were in the dragon kingdom yesterday, all _three_ of you decided to pick someone to break the law with?"

He and Aiden nod.

"I didn't know it was a _law_!" Stiles says loudly. "I just knew we had to keep it a secret because it's _generally frowned upon_! Why did your kingdom make it a _law_?"

"Because we don't want to taint our blood from its true wolf," she says. "It's not that we really care if we have the occasional one night stand, but to _mate_ with one is out of the question. And he's of royal blood! If something ever happens to me, he's the one that's going to take the throne, but by that time he'll have been kicked out and Peter would rule anyway!"

"Obviously he wasn't banking on something happening to you, then," Jennifer says.

Braiden hisses at her to shut up again, and this time the she-devil actually does.

Stiles' eyes widen. "I get it. They're going to tell everyone that we're dead, which means that Talia, Derek, and Peter are the last alphas left. But Talia and Derek know that we're not dead yet, and Peter is probably threatening Talia that he _will_ kill us if she doesn't step down and let Derek rule. But then he's going to announce that Derek has been with me and the entire kingdom will _choose_ to overthrow Derek so that Peter can rule. There isn't going to be a war to _make_ him king, there's going to be a war _afterwards_. He lied to us."

The realization sinks in slowly.

"Talia must know that he'll kill us anyway, though," Patrick says. "She wouldn't cooperate with that."

"Maybe not," Ethan says, moving to stand. "Maybe he's bribed Talia with letting us survive, but he'll keep us in here and simply give us food and water."

"That also means that these bars are sure as hell going to hold for a while," Aiden mutters.

"They must be infused with something," Laura says, running a hand along them. "Arachnid webbing, maybe."

"Probably mermaid fins, too," Erica says. "They're practically indestructible once they've coralized."

"And werecat sun-glue," Cora says with a nod, like she's proud of herself for contributing. "They use it to string their homes of bones together." Well, at least some things never change.

Stiles sighs, moving to sit down beside his mom, and his dad sits down at that as well. "So we're still dead."

"Not quite."

The twelve of them that are trapped snap their heads over to the hole in the cave, and Stiles cries out for joy when he sees who it is standing _outside_ of the cage: Scott, Melissa, his dad (Rafael is a horrible person and Melissa divorced him a long time ago, but Stiles can't deny that he's a great warrior), Danny, a woman about the same age as Derek and definitely not a dragon with that fur across her cheeks, and a woman with pastel pink hair hanging out in the back of the rescue group.

"Oh my gods!" Stiles says loudly as most of their twelve leaps up to crowd around the hole. "How the hell did you—"

"She brought us here," Scott says, pointing at the woman Derek's age. "This is Paige."

Jennifer groans from where she's still sitting. "Looks like an entire _convention_ of Derek's official love life. Lonely."

"Shut the hell up, Jennifer," Braiden says, rolling her eyes.

Stiles can't take it anymore. "Who are you, exactly?"

"I'm Isaac's old caretaker," she says. "I raised him after his parents died."

Stiles frowns at the curly-haired wolf. He didn't know that _both_ of his parents were dead…

Isaac shakes his head. "It's not important." He motions to the people outside of the cage, and Stiles turns back around, dropping the topic.

"Hi," Paige says. "We don't have much time, so we can talk later." She motions to the girl with pink hair. "This is Princess Jal, the only mermaid alpha in line for the throne. She's here to help you guys get out of this thing."

"You know how?" Isaac asks, eyes wide and bright and thankful.

She nods, holding up what looks like a snail shell. "Stand back," her voice is like an angel's.

Nobody moves. Stiles just…he wants to touch her…

"My ancestors were sirens," she says, attaching the snail shell to the bars with little octopus legs that wiggle out of it. "Give it a few more seconds and you won't feel it anymore. Also, stand back unless you want to be dissolved."

It hurts a little, but Stiles and the others manage to stand back as far as they can.

"Five seconds!" Jal yells, ducking down.

The dragons and wolves outside of the cage drop down as well, and five seconds later, the snail shell explodes, and the tentacles begin to grow (not in size, but length), shifting and twist to wrap around the bars. Those in the cage give little shudders and move away from the walls, stepping up to get off of the crawling tentacles ways and just stepping on parts that have already been covered.

"Jump when I say to or you're gone," Jal says, standing back up again. "One…two…three…"

The tentacles begin to glow and sizzle as she counts.

"…four…five…"

Stiles holds his breath.

"NOW!"

The twelve of them bump into each other awkwardly in their leaps, everyone holding tightly to someone's hand to help them. And, when they land, the bars are gone and there's nothing but sizzling, silver goo dripping around them.

"_Whoa_," Isaac says with those wide, curious eyes, absolutely mesmerized. "_I_ was born the wrong species."

Jal hums at him, but nothing more, stepping out of everyone's way again. Stiles remembers that merfolk are very solitary, and Jal is no exception. Everyone embraces in hugs and words of gratitude, except for Jennifer and Paige, who just glare at each other a little bit. Stiles is definitely going to have to ask Derek what happened with Jennifer…

"Come on," Scott says, elbowing Stiles. "The others are waiting for us."

"The others?" Claudia asks as she and Patrick are fretted over by Melissa and Rafael.

"Yup," Scott says. "We got _everyone_."

"Define 'everyone'," Stiles asks.

"Besides us," Danny says as they all move quickly out of the cave, hand woven with Ethan's, "we have Allison, her parents, Bennett"—(a servant not related to the Argent's)—"Kate, Jackson, Lydia, Heather, Danielle, Deaton, and also a couple of mermaid guards for Jal."

Stiles grins brightly. "So basically everyone."

"Paige came into the village practically screaming for help," Melissa says, hand holding Claudia's. "It didn't take long to get us together. We didn't get together the usual army because we didn't want to start a war prematurely. The entire kingdom of Beacon Moon is awake, torches burning all over the place and chanting for Derek's execution at sunrise."

Stiles gives Paige a thankful look. "Why aren't you on everyone else's side, though?"

"Because it's stupid," she says. "Everybody else thinks that it's stupid, too, but…well, you know. Peer pressure and old laws. Nobody's every been a huge fan of Derek in the first place, considering he doesn't really talk or smile or _anything_."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Tell me about it."

"Okay, now Derek's love life really isn't important," Laura says, running up alongside them. "How long is this damn cave?"

"It's the deepest one there is," she says. "You were taken to the very depths of the mountain so that nobody would hear your screams, howls, and roars, plus the wolves wouldn't be able to feel the light of the moon. Talia probably would have set up mirrors, of course, but those would be constantly broken under Peter's guards."

"Who all helped him plan this?" Laura snarls.

"The dragon called Gerard, and the rest are werewolves: Deucalion, Ennis, Kali, and Marin."

Braiden gasps. "Marin? No, she couldn't have."

"You know she has no other choice," Paige says darkly. "Deucalion said it was an accident to bind her to him, but now it's obviously that he was lying."

Stiles frowns. "Can't werewolves tell when people are lying by their heartbeats?"

Jennifer growls darkly. "Deucalion is a very good liar."

"Anyway," Paige says as they all turn down another shaft. Stiles has no idea how they actually know which way they're going. Maybe their smell? "Ethan and Aiden would have been recruited as well, but Peter decided to kick them out since they've obviously formed bonds with the dragons."

"Shame we didn't keep it a secret," Ethan says. "We could have come and helped as well."

"We had plenty of help," Rafael. "Too much, actually. It was hard to get through the woods undetected, and especially when we only had one wolf to lead us through."

Stiles nods, and then glances back at Jal where she's trialing along in the back. "Is she okay?" he asks.

"She's fine," Paige says. "She's just not used to being out of the water. Her legs are weak."

"She's not going to fall behind and get captured, will she?"

She shakes her head. "She's an alpha, she'll be fine."

It feels like even more ages before Stiles can finally see some light, and then he's walking out into the clear air, many more bodies waiting for them there in the dark. He makes out all twelve of the bodies that Scott said, actually.

"Now what?" Stiles asks, looking around.

"We have to get to the execution sight," Paige says, pulling a map out of her pocket. "We don't actually need this many people since we've got Laura and Cora, but it's a precaution, and also because all of them refused to be left out." She gives the tiniest of eye rolls, but Stiles can tell that she's thankful. "Jal, you and your men get back to your kingdom. I'm not about to accidentally start a war between _three_ of us."

Jal nods, taking the map. "If you die I swear to the gods I'll—"

Paige grabs her and kisses her hard.

"Oh," Stiles says. "Is that why you two broke up?"

"Nope," Paige says when she pulls away, shoving Jal away so they can get out of this mess. "That was a simple parting of ways."

Stiles nods in reply. "Right, so now we need to go. What's the plan? We just waltz right in there? All…" He looks around, adding up their numbers. "All twenty-seven of us? Literally a small army."

"A _very_ small army," Laura says, "which is exactly why it's going to work. Cora and I will walk up front, and I want the rest of you werewolves to stay in the back and to the sides so Peter can't order any of the dragons to be picked off while we're on the move. I want all of the dragons to pick a buddy just in case, though since there's a different number of us one gorup will have to have three."

In the end, the groups are Stiles and Danny, his parents together, Scott and his mom, Allison and her aunt, her two parents and Bennet, Lydia and Jackson, Heather and Danielle, and finally Deaton and Rafael.

"And now we…march?" Stiles asks, looking around. "In a big circle?"

"Exactly that," Paige says, grinning. "Our numbers will draw attention to us and get us in even faster."

"And then we break up uncle's evil plot!" Cora says, throwing her arms up. "And then we'll murder _him_!"

"Right,' Laura says, patting her on the head. "Death by beheading. He'll get what he deserves."

The march is awkward, to say the least, but to say the most it's angry and stubborn and vengeful. Twenty-seven very angry people, ready to storm the castle like it's their fucking job. Eight werewolves to avenge their queen and prince, and seventeen dragons to avenge all three of their royal family members and also to help stop a tyrant from ruling and then starting a war.

"Oh, Stiles, I forgot to say!" Erica yells from where she is in the back. "Happy birthday!"

Despite themselves, everyone laughs. It's a nice feeling, but it doesn't last for long. It's hard to get through the woods with this many people in a huddle, but the wolves manage to get them through it (they must be able to smell everything, because nobody would be able to memorize _all_ these booby trap locations).

"Halt!" a guard says at the front gate. "Who go—good gods, it can't be!"

"It is!" another guard yells, rushing forward. "Princess Laura, Princess Cora, you're alive!"

"Take me to the execution," Laura snarls at them. "We must stop Peter at all costs!"

Everything happens so fast after that… With so many guards running after and around them, helping them through the mob of a kingdom, the werewolves are able to sprint on all fours while every last dragon takes flight. It causes a lot of screaming, even _with_ the truce, but that's probably because it's the middle of the night with creepy flickering torches around and they're about to have an execution _because_ Derek is dating a dragon.

Stiles can see the red anger of Peter's eyes when he sees them, continuing on even as he, Gerard, and their servants are forced to kneel before being bound. He doesn't even show his alpha form. He knows he's lost. Laura explains the situation swiftly to the mob below her, all of them appalled at their momentary king. Talia comes out of her hiding place, and Stiles finds that he's right, that Peter bribed her with being able to keep all of them alive in place of her stepping down. But now she's back, ordering for Peter, Gerard, Deucalion, Ennis, and Kali to be executed. She knows of Marin's accidental bond to Deucalion, on the other hand, and simply keeps her bound until Deucalion is dead and the spell is broken. It's…anticlimactic, almost.

Comically, after the five traitors are lined up to be decapitated, Derek is the last thing to be taken care of. Stiles doesn't care _if_ it's forbidden, he rushes forward and lashes at Derek's ties, lying him down where he was barely standing. Stiles can tell that he's been drugged too much for his alpha _or_ beta forms to be used, so he can barely even keep his eyes open.

"Stiles?" he says, blinking up at him. "Is that you?"

"Oh my gods," Stiles chokes out, wrapping his arms around Derek's neck. "You actually thought you were going to die, you poor puppy."

Derek hums a little, wrapping his arms slowly around Stiles' waist in his sitting up position. "I really did," he chokes out. "I can't believe you came. How did you get out?"

"Later," Stiles says, pulling away. "Your entire kingdom knows about us now, Derek, and _you_ didn't tell me it was forbidden."

"It wasn't important," he says. "We were keeping it a secret anyway. I would have told you if we were going to tell more people."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Whatever, we have a _lot_ to talk about besides just that and our escape and stuff." He looks up, signally to Laura as the guards are issuing the executions. Stiles honestly didn't even notice that Ennis and Kali were already dead, heads in a basket. He was too busy fretting over his boyfriend.

Laura sees him and comes over, dropping down to her knees. "They're still going to want you dead, Derek," she whispers. "You can't…" She grits her teeth. "You can't stay here. Not for a while, anyway. You'll need to go into hiding at first. Mother and I will do something about it. No one has ever _actually_ been executed for the law between the public love of a werewolf and a dragon, so it won't be as difficult to abolish it altogether. It's going to take time, though."

"He'll stay with us," a new voice says, and the three of them look up to both of Stiles' parents.

Stiles raises his eyebrows. "Really? It's not going to make the werewolves happy. They'll want to come in and get him."

"Do I really look like I give a damn?" his mom snarls. Her wings are still out, having ripped through her dress (most dragon clothes have slits there in the clothing, but most of her dresses don't since she doesn't expect to need to use them—and she's usually right), as are her claws, fangs, and glowing yellow eyes.

Stiles grins at her before looking at his dad. "You too?"

He holds up a clawed hand, gazing over them with his own yellow eyes. "It's a stupid law."

Stiles nods and looks down at Derek. "You're staying with us."

It's not a question, and the way that Derek smiles groggily up at him, he's not about to make it one.


	6. Epilogue

[Chapter summary: In which love becomes love, heir becomes science, and dragons howl.]

**Epilogue**

_4 Months Later  
Day 135…_

Stiles sort of wakes up happy, thanks to being wrapped in Derek's arms, but the fact that he's shaken forcefully awake by multiple joyful screaming bodies is not exactly his cup of tea. It's Scott, Allison, Isaac, Erica _and_ Boyd all jumping around their bed, yelling at them to wake up and smell the roses, but Stiles is pretty sure he'd rather just prick himself on the thorns and go back to bed.

"_What_?" Derek snarls, finally sitting upright.

Stiles just groans and moves to wrap his arms around his waist, burying his face in his side.

"IT PASSED, IT PASSED!" Erica screams, dropping down to straddle Derek and kiss him hard. "IT PASSED, YOU CAN COME BACK!"

Stiles grumbles a little as the blonde jumps back up and forces himself to sit up as well, dropping his head to Derek's shoulder. "What passed?"

"The abolishment of the law that werewolves and dragons can't be in love, dummy," Allison says, bouncing down on her ass before jumping back up. "Derek can go back to Beacon Moon and not be glared at, now!

"The vote was completely unanimous!" Scott adds. "Not a single vote against it!"

Stiles' eyes widen as he leans up on his own. "Really?" He looks at Derek. "Hear that?"

Derek is grinning as well, but then he frowns. "That means I can't sleep next to you every night, though."

Isaac groans, dropping down to sit. "Seriously? You had to ruin the fun with your romance?"

Boyd bends down and kisses him. "You love romance," he says.

"Only _my_ romance," he mutters, crossing his arms.

Derek grabs his shirt and pulls him foreword to raspberry his forehead, pulling out a giggling scream. "You love it and you know it."

He shrugs. "You caught me."

Erica tackles him onto the floor at that, kissing him until he stops giggling.

"Also," Allison says, sitting down, "the experiment worked."

Stiles actually knows what she means right away at that, and his grin broadens. It's well known that the mermen of Beacon Wave are able to get pregnant since the only thing that differs between genders is the _upper_ half. Three months ago the kingdom of Beacon Sky went to them for help to see if it were possible to create a baby without sexual intercourse. Stiles doesn't know the details because they're confusing as all hell, but apparently the experiment worked.

"Do you know what this _means_?!" he says to Derek excitedly. "I don't have to have sex with some random girl to produce an heir! We can mix our sperm together and then add the eggs in from someone else and _grow_ the baby. I won't have to cheat on you!"

Derek laughs, rubbing his nose against Stiles'. "In that case," he says, "everybody out." He looks up to glare a little. "Right now. This is important."

Scott and Allison leave with a groan, but Derek's three friends are wearing big grins and giving him thumbs ups.

"They're not exactly subtle," Derek says, rolling over to get to the nightstand that he deemed his the moment he moved in four months ago. All of Stiles' own things are still in it, he's just not allowed to access them. It's not a big deal. The only thing he actively uses is the little bottle of lotion he likes, and usually Derek is the one putting it on him anyway.

"What did they mean?" he asks.

When Derek leans back up he's got his hand fisted and his eyes are bright. "You know I love you, right?"

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "Duh."

"And you love me?"

"How many times do I tell you that in a single day?"

"Exactly." He takes Stiles' left hand with his own non-fisted one. "And your family loves me, and mine loves you, so…" He turns Stiles' hand palm up and places his fist over it. "I want to ask you something." He opens his fist, and something small and cold drops into his hand.

Stiles' eyes widen at the ring, silver with a shimmering white gem that Stiles has learned over the past four months is called a moonstone.

"You'll marry me, right?" the wolf asks. "Because I would never be able to live without you. I know I crushed on you from afar for three years, but ever since that day I met you drenched in blood…" He shrugs. "I always knew that that was the real you, so I just knew that I wanted it to be you."

Stiles almost drops the ring when he launches himself at his boyfriend—his _fiancé_—and chants "yes" between all of his kisses. Derek slips the ring on when Stiles finally pulls away, kissing his finger.

"Do you remember our first kiss?" he asks.

Stiles nods. "You just finished telling me the collapsing cave story." He frowns. "Come to think of it, how was that in any way romantic?"

"It wasn't, but your answer was the reason I really started to fall in love with you. You were so accepting and…and…"

"And stuff?"

Derek nods. "And stuff. You were already using my lap as a pillow. It was so easy."

"Not to mention _amazing_."

Derek smiles warmly down at him. "Whatever it was, you owe me a ring."

Stiles grins. "I am so putting little dragon wings on yours."

"Mmm, good." He kisses him softly, but only for a moment. "You know what I've always wanted to hear?"

"What?"

"How embarrassing you would sound if you howled."

Stiles grins, remembering his dreams. They've progressed from just Derek with furry wings, so he knows that he _sounds_ awesome—in the dream, at least. "Absolutely terrible."

The wolf's hands drop to his thighs. "Show me."

Stiles definitely sounds terrible, but Derek kisses him anyway.

_**-fin-**_

* * *

If you liked this story, I've got another one that's similar to it in setting and the like! It's called The Lull of Night, and you can find it on here too :)


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